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The US President is not typically known for guidance, especially from international figures who frequently attempt to praise and compliment the US president.

However, El Salvador's authoritarian leader Nayib Bukele has adopted a distinct approach by calling on the Trump administration to emulate his actions in removing so-called “dishonest judges.”

The call for Trump to move against the US judiciary also received support from Trump allies, such as an X post by one-time close Trump ally the billionaire, who has in the past boosted Bukele's demands to impeach US judges.

Growing Risks to Judicial Independence

Analysts note that the leader's recent intervention come at a time of unmatched threats to judicial independence and individual judges in the US, and during a period where the Trump administration is employing comparable authoritarian tactics employed by rulers in countries such as Turkey, Hungary, India, and Bukele's own the Central American country to weaken government oversight.

Bukele's social media call recently was just the latest in a long series of taunts and allegations he has made against the US's legal system, including a March claim that the US was “facing a court takeover,” and ridicule of a federal judge's order to halt deportation flights transporting suspected illegal immigrants to his nation's harsh correctional facilities.

Attacks on Oregon Justice

The Salvadoran's impeachment call was also issued amid social media criticism on the state's justice Judge Immergut by presidential advisor Miller, former AG Pam Bondi, Elon Musk, and the president himself in a recent press gaggle.

Immergut had issued restraining orders blocking Trump from deploying the military reserves, first in Oregon then in the West Coast state. Trump has been pushing to dispatch soldiers into Portland, which the president has characterized as “war-ravaged” based on small, peaceful demonstrations outside the city's homeland security facility.

Record of Attacking Judges

The advisor, Bondi, and Musk have a history of criticizing judges who have ruled against Trump's executive orders or in other ways hindered the government's policy goals. Before returning to power recently, Trump directed his followers against judges presiding over his legal cases, who were then deluged with threats and harassment.

Monitoring groups, law enforcement agencies, and judges themselves have highlighted a heightened atmosphere of threats and intimidation in the months since he re-entered the presidency.

Increasing Risk Data

According to data gathered by the US Marshals Service, in the current year through the end of September, there were 562 threats to nearly four hundred federal judges, giving rise to 805 inquiries. 2025 has already eclipsed the first recorded year, and last year, and is likely to exceed the previous year's high of 630 threats.

The threats are not only happening at the national level. Information by the university's research project shows that there have been at least fifty-nine cases of threats, targeting, stalking, or violence committed against judges on the state and municipal levels in 2025.

Expert Insights on Threat Sources

Experts say that the threats are a result of the rhetoric coming from senior administration figures.

In spring, the watchdog group published a comprehensive report alleging that “harmful and reckless statements from Trump administration members and supporters align with rising violent posts on online platforms.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent rise in demands for removal and violent threats against judges across social media platforms from January to February of this year, the first full month of the president's term.”

Beirich, the co-founder of the organization, said: “The president's warnings against judges have definitely fueled online vitriol at judges and demands for ouster. Targeting the judiciary is one more step in Trump’s advance towards authoritarianism.”

Global Authoritarian Tactics

This progression towards authoritarianism has been common in recent years in multiple nations, such as by Bukele.

In 2021, right after commencing a second term in the face of legal bans, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to remove the country’s top prosecutor and five judges on the constitutional court. The judges, who had provoked his ire by rejecting pandemic policies, made way for new appointees selected by Bukele.

The action mirrored Viktor Orbán’s remodeling of the nation's judiciary in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s court cleanups recently; and attempts at comparable actions in the Middle Eastern state and Poland.

Undermining Court Autonomy

Analysts explain that the intimidation and rhetorical attacks in the US can be seen as attempts to undermine judicial independence in a structure that offers no easy way for the president to remove judges the administration disapproves of.

Leonard, an academic at Illinois State University who has studied authoritarian backsliding in democracies, said the Trump administration had taken cues from the examples set by authoritarians abroad.

“The government is looking around at these achievements and failures. They know they’re not going to be able to pass any laws that would undermine the courts,” she said.

Citing instances such as the advisor's relentless claims of broad presidential authority, she noted: “They openly attack the judiciary by repeating over and over that it is not a co-equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They persist in reframe the debate by repeating their argument that the president has greater authority than this judicial branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

The professor said: “Justices' only protection is people’s belief in the authority of their ability to make those rulings. Individual threats on top of weakening institutional legitimacy may make judges hesitate about decisions that go against the current administration, which is, of course, massively problematic for court oversight and for democracy.”

Intimidation Tactics

Scheppele, professor of sociology and global studies at Princeton University, has written about the use of “autocratic legalism” by the likes of the Hungarian and Putin, and has warned about rising threats to judges in the US.

She highlighted a series of termed “harassment deliveries” this year, in which judges have received unwanted food orders with the recipient listed as Daniel Anderl, the child of Justice Salas, who was killed at the residence in 2020 by a gunman aiming at Salas.

“Everyone understands what it means. ‘We know where you live. You are a target,’” the professor said.

“Federal judges are protected by the Secret Service and the Marshals Service. And those are both specialized law enforcement that sit structurally inside the federal agency. And Pam Bondi has been spearheading the criticism on federal judges.”

Administration Aims

Regarding the government's aims, Scheppele said that “impeaching a US justice is almost certainly not going to happen because it’s so hard to do. {Right now|Currently