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The US President rarely accepts guidance, particularly from foreign leaders who often seek to praise and compliment the American leader.

But, El Salvador's authoritarian leader Bukele has followed a different strategy by urging the White House to follow his example in removing so-called “corrupt judges.”

The call for the president to move against the US judiciary also received backing from Maga figures, including an X post by former supporter the billionaire, who has previously amplified Bukele's calls to oust US judges.

Growing Risks to Judicial Independence

Analysts note that the leader's recent remarks occur of unmatched dangers to court autonomy and specific justices in the US, and during a period where the president's team is using similar strong-arm tactics employed by rulers in nations such as Türkiye, Hungary, the Asian nation, and Bukele's own El Salvador to undermine government oversight.

The president's social media statement recently was just the latest in a long series of taunts and claims he has leveled against the US's legal system, such as a March assertion that the US was “experiencing a judicial coup,” and ridicule of a court's ruling to stop removal operations transporting accused undocumented individuals to his nation's brutal correctional facilities.

Criticism on Federal Judge

Bukele's demand for removal was also made during social media attacks on the state's justice Karin Immergut by presidential advisor Stephen Miller, attorney general Pam Bondi, Elon Musk, and Trump personally in a latest media briefing.

The judge had issued injunctions preventing Trump from mobilizing the national guard, first in Oregon then in California. Trump has been eager to send soldiers into the city, which the president has described as “battle-scarred” based on small, non-violent demonstrations outside the urban federal building.

Record of Attacking Justices

The advisor, the former AG, and Musk have a long record of criticizing judges who have blocked presidential directives or in other ways impeded the administration's political agenda. Prior to resuming office recently, the president directed his supporters against judges presiding over his civil and criminal trials, who were then inundated with threats and harassment.

Watchdog organizations, police departments, and judges themselves have highlighted a increased climate of risks and coercion in the months since he re-entered the presidency.

Rising Risk Data

According to information collected by the federal agency, in 2025 through the third quarter, there were 562 threats to 395 federal judges, leading to 805 investigations. This year has already eclipsed 2022, and last year, and is likely to top the previous year's high of 630 reported incidents.

The threats are not just happening at the national level. Information by the university's Bridging Divides Initiative shows that there have been at least fifty-nine instances of threats, harassment, stalking, or physical attacks directed against judges on the local level in 2025.

Expert Analysis on Threat Sources

Specialists say that the threats are a product of the rhetoric coming from senior administration figures.

In May, the watchdog group published a detailed report alleging that “malicious and reckless statements from Trump administration members and allies coincide with escalating aggressive posts on online platforms.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent rise in demands for impeachment and physical intimidation against judges across digital networks from the first two months 2025, the initial period of Trump’s administration.”

Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of GPAHE, said: “The president's threats against judges have definitely driven digital abuse at judges and demands for impeachment. Targeting the judiciary is one more step in Trump’s advance towards authoritarianism.”

International Strongman Tactics

That march towards autocracy has been well-trodden in recent years in multiple nations, such as by the Salvadoran.

In several years ago, right after starting a new term despite legal bans, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to dismiss the country’s attorney general and five justices on the supreme court. The judges, who had provoked his ire by ruling against coronavirus measures, made way for replacements selected by Bukele.

The move echoed the Hungarian leader's remodeling of the nation's judiciary in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges in 2019; and efforts at similar moves in the Middle Eastern state and the European country.

Undermining Judicial Independence

Experts explain that the intimidation and rhetorical attacks in the US can be seen as attempts to undermine judicial independence in a structure that provides no simple method for the president to dismiss judges Trump opposes.

Meghan Leonard, an academic at the university who has studied authoritarian backsliding in free nations, said the White House had taken cues from the examples set by strongmen abroad.

“The administration is looking around at these successes and failures. They know they’re not going to be able to enact any legislation that would weaken the judiciary,” she said.

Pointing to examples such as the advisor's persistent claims of nearly limitless presidential authority, she noted: “They directly attack the judiciary by repeating repeatedly that it is not a equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They persist in redefine the discussion by emphasizing their claim that the executive has greater authority than this other co-equal branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

Leonard said: “Justices' sole safeguard is people’s belief in the legitimacy of their capacity to make those decisions. Individual threats on top of weakening institutional legitimacy may make judges think twice about judgments that go against the current administration, which is, of course, highly concerning for court oversight and for the political system.”

Intimidation Tactics

Scheppele, professor of social science and international affairs at Princeton University, has documented the use of “autocratic legalism” by the likes of the Hungarian and the Russian, and has warned about escalating dangers to judges in the US.

She highlighted a series of termed “pizza doxxings” recently, in which judges have received unsolicited food orders with the recipient listed as Daniel Anderl, the child of Judge Esther Salas, who was killed at the judge’s home in several years ago by a assailant targeting Salas.

“All knows what it means. ‘Your address is known. You are a target,’” Scheppele said.

“Federal judges are protected by the presidential protection and the Marshals Service. And those are both specialized law enforcement that are placed institutionally inside the Department of Justice. And Pam Bondi has been leading the attacks on justices.”

Government Goals

On the administration’s aims, the expert said that “removing a US justice is highly not going to happen because it’s so hard to do. {Right now|Currently