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The US President is not typically known for advice, especially from international figures who often attempt to flatter and admire the US president.

However, the Central American nation's authoritarian leader Bukele has followed a different approach by calling on the Trump administration to follow his example in removing so-called “corrupt judges.”

His appeal for Trump to take action against the American court system also received backing from Maga figures, including an X post by one-time close Trump ally the billionaire, who has previously amplified Bukele's calls to impeach US judges.

Growing Risks to Judicial Independence

Analysts note that Bukele's latest remarks come at a time of unprecedented dangers to court autonomy and individual judges in the US, and during a phase where the Trump administration is employing similar strong-arm tactics used by rulers in nations such as Turkey, Hungary, India, and his native El Salvador to undermine government oversight.

Bukele's social media call recently was one more in a long series of provocations and claims he has leveled against the American judiciary, including a March assertion that the US was “experiencing a court takeover,” and ridicule of a court's ruling to halt deportation flights sending accused undocumented individuals to his country's brutal prison system.

Attacks on Federal Judge

Bukele's demand for removal was also made amid online attacks on Oregon justice Karin Immergut by presidential advisor Stephen Miller, former AG Bondi, Elon Musk, and the president personally in a latest press gaggle.

The judge had ordered injunctions blocking the administration from deploying the national guard, first in the state then in the West Coast state. Trump has been pushing to dispatch soldiers into the city, which the president has characterized as “war-ravaged” based on small, non-violent demonstrations outside the city's federal building.

Record of Attacking Judges

Miller, the former AG, and the entrepreneur have a history of criticizing judges who have ruled against Trump's executive orders or otherwise impeded the administration's political agenda. Before returning to power recently, Trump directed his supporters against judges overseeing his civil and criminal trials, who were then inundated with intimidation and harassment.

Monitoring groups, police departments, and judges themselves have pointed to a heightened atmosphere of threats and intimidation in the period since he returned to the presidency.

Rising Risk Data

According to information gathered by the federal agency, in 2025 through the third quarter, there were 562 incidents to nearly four hundred federal judges, leading to more than eight hundred investigations. 2025 has already surpassed the first recorded year, and 2024, and is on track to exceed the previous year's high of 630 threats.

The dangers are not only happening at the national level. Information by the university's research project indicates that there have been at least 59 cases of intimidation, harassment, surveillance, or violence committed against judges on the state and municipal levels in 2025.

Analyst Analysis on Threat Sources

Experts say that the intimidation are a result of the language coming from top government officials.

In spring, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a comprehensive report alleging that “harmful and reckless statements from Trump administration members and allies align with rising aggressive posts on social media.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent rise in calls for impeachment and violent threats against judges across digital networks from January to February 2025, the first full month of Trump’s administration.”

Beirich, the founder of GPAHE, said: “Trump’s threats against judges have certainly driven online vitriol at judges and calls for impeachment. Attacking the judiciary is one more step in the administration's advance towards authoritarianism.”

Global Authoritarian Playbook

That march towards authoritarianism has been common in recent years in several nations, including by the Salvadoran.

In 2021, right after starting a second term despite constitutional prohibitions, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to remove the nation's top prosecutor and several judges on the supreme court. The judges, who had provoked his ire by rejecting coronavirus measures, made way for replacements hand picked by the leader.

The action mirrored Viktor Orbán’s overhaul of the nation's judiciary several years back; the Turkish president's judicial purges in 2019; and efforts at similar moves in the Middle Eastern state and the European country.

Weakening Judicial Independence

Experts say that the intimidation and verbal assaults in the US can be seen as efforts to undermine judicial independence in a structure that provides no simple method for the president to dismiss judges Trump disapproves of.

Leonard, an academic at the university who has studied democratic decline in democracies, said the Trump administration had taken cues from the models set by authoritarians abroad.

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

Citing examples such as the advisor's relentless assertions of nearly limitless presidential authority, she noted: “They openly criticize the judiciary by stating repeatedly that it is not a equal branch in the government structure.

“They continue to reframe the discussion by repeating their claim that the executive has more power than this other co-equal branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

Leonard said: “Judges' only protection is public trust in the legitimacy of their ability to make those decisions. Personal intimidation on top of eroding trust in courts may make judges think twice about decisions that go against the current administration, which is, of course, massively problematic for judicial review and for democracy.”

Intimidation Tactics

Scheppele, academic of sociology and global studies at the Ivy League school, has documented the use of “autocratic legalism” by the such as the Hungarian and the Russian, and has warned about escalating threats to judges in the US.

She pointed to a series of so-called “harassment deliveries” this year, in which judges have received unwanted pizza deliveries with the customer listed as Daniel Anderl, the child of Justice Salas, who was murdered at the judge’s home in 2020 by a assailant aiming at the judge.

“All knows what it means. ‘We know where you live. You are a target,’” Scheppele said.

“US justices are guarded by the presidential protection and the federal police. And these are dedicated law enforcement that sit structurally inside the federal agency. And Pam Bondi has been spearheading the criticism on justices.”

Government Goals

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