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Donald Trump rarely accepts advice, especially from foreign leaders who often attempt to flatter and compliment the American leader.

However, El Salvador's strongman president Bukele has adopted a different approach by calling on the Trump administration to follow his example in removing so-called “corrupt judges.”

His appeal for the president to move against the American court system also garnered support from Trump allies, including an social media message by former close Trump ally the billionaire, who has in the past amplified Bukele's calls to oust US judges.

Growing Risks to Judicial Independence

Analysts say that Bukele's latest intervention occur of unmatched dangers to court autonomy and specific justices in the US, and during a phase where the president's team is employing comparable authoritarian methods employed by rulers in countries such as Turkey, the European state, India, and his native the Central American country to weaken government oversight.

Bukele's social media statement recently was just the latest in a string of provocations and claims he has made against the US's legal system, such as a spring claim that the US was “experiencing a judicial coup,” and his mockery of a federal judge's ruling to halt deportation flights transporting suspected undocumented individuals to his nation's brutal prison system.

Attacks on Oregon Justice

Bukele's demand for removal was also issued amid social media attacks on the state's federal judge Karin Immergut by presidential advisor Miller, former AG Pam Bondi, Musk, and Trump personally in a latest press gaggle.

The judge had ordered injunctions blocking Trump from deploying the military reserves, initially in the state then in California. The president has been eager to send soldiers into Portland, which the leader has characterized as “war-ravaged” based on small, peaceful protests outside the urban federal building.

Record of Attacking Judges

The advisor, the former AG, and the entrepreneur have a long record of attacking judges who have blocked Trump's executive orders or otherwise impeded the administration's policy goals. Prior to resuming office recently, Trump directed his supporters against judges overseeing his civil and criminal trials, who were then inundated with intimidation and harassment.

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

Increasing Risk Data

Based on information gathered by the federal agency, in the current year through the end of September, there were 562 threats to nearly four hundred US justices, leading to more than eight hundred inquiries. This year has already eclipsed the first recorded year, and last year, and is likely to top 2023's high of 630 threats.

The dangers are not just happening at the federal level. Data from Princeton's Bridging Divides Initiative indicates that there have been at least fifty-nine cases of intimidation, targeting, surveillance, or physical attacks committed against judges on the state and municipal levels in the current year.

Analyst Insights on Root Causes

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

In spring, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a comprehensive report alleging that “harmful and highly irresponsible statements from White House allies and supporters align with escalating violent posts on social media.” It noted “a fifty-four percent increase in calls for impeachment and physical intimidation against judges across social media platforms from the first two months 2025, the initial period of Trump’s administration.”

Beirich, the co-founder of the organization, said: “The president's threats against judges have certainly driven online vitriol at judges and calls for ouster. Targeting the judiciary is one more step in Trump’s advance towards strongman rule.”

International Strongman Playbook

That march towards autocracy has been well-trodden in the past decade in several nations, including by Bukele.

In 2021, right after starting a second term in the face of constitutional prohibitions, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to remove the nation's attorney general and several judges on the constitutional court. The judges, who had provoked his ire by rejecting pandemic policies, were replaced by new appointees selected by Bukele.

The action echoed Viktor Orbán’s remodeling of the nation's judiciary in 2018; the Turkish president's judicial purges recently; and attempts at comparable actions in Israel and Poland.

Weakening Judicial Independence

Experts explain that the intimidation and rhetorical attacks in the US can be seen as attempts to undermine court autonomy in a structure that provides no simple method for the president to remove judges the administration disapproves of.

Leonard, an associate professor at Illinois State University who has studied authoritarian backsliding in free nations, said the Trump administration had learned from the examples set by strongmen overseas.

“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 judiciary,” she said.

Pointing to instances such as the advisor's persistent claims of broad presidential authority, she added: “They openly attack the courts by stating over and over that it is not a co-equal branch in the government structure.

“They continue to redefine the discussion by emphasizing their argument that the executive has greater authority than this other co-equal branch, which is not how separation powers work.”

Leonard said: “Judges' only protection is public trust in the authority 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, massively problematic for court oversight and for democracy.”

Coercion Methods

Scheppele, academic of social science and international affairs at the Ivy League school, has written about the use of “autocratic legalism” by the likes of the Hungarian and Putin, and has warned about escalating dangers to judges in the US.

She pointed to a series of termed “pizza doxxings” this year, in which judges have received unwanted food orders with the customer listed as a name, the child of Justice Salas, who was killed at the judge’s home in 2020 by a assailant targeting Salas.

“All knows what it means. ‘Your address is known. You are a target,’” the professor 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 federal agency. And Pam Bondi has been leading the criticism on federal judges.”

Administration Aims

On the government's objectives, Scheppele said that “impeaching a US justice is highly not going to happen because it’s very difficult to do. {Right now|Currently