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The US President is not typically known for guidance, particularly from foreign leaders who frequently attempt to flatter and admire the American leader.

However, El Salvador's authoritarian leader Nayib Bukele has followed a distinct approach by calling on the White House to emulate his actions in removing what he terms “corrupt judges.”

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

Growing Threats to Court Autonomy

Analysts say that the leader's recent intervention occur of unmatched dangers to court autonomy and individual judges in the United States, and during a phase where the Trump administration is employing similar authoritarian tactics employed by leaders in countries such as Türkiye, the European state, the Asian nation, and his native the Central American country to weaken government oversight.

The president's social media statement recently was just the latest in a string of taunts and claims he has made against the US's legal system, such as a March assertion that the US was “experiencing a judicial coup,” and ridicule of a federal judge's order to stop deportation flights transporting accused undocumented individuals to his country's brutal prison system.

Criticism on Federal Judge

The Salvadoran's impeachment call was also issued amid online criticism on the state's justice Karin Immergut by presidential advisor Miller, former AG Bondi, Elon Musk, and the president personally in a latest media briefing.

The judge had issued restraining orders blocking the administration from mobilizing the military reserves, first in Oregon then in California. Trump has been eager to dispatch soldiers into the city, which the leader has characterized as “battle-scarred” based on small, peaceful protests outside the urban homeland security facility.

History of Targeting Judges

The advisor, Bondi, and Musk have a long record of criticizing judges who have ruled against presidential directives or otherwise impeded the administration's political agenda. Prior to returning to power this year, the president directed his followers against judges overseeing his legal cases, who were then inundated with threats and harassment.

Monitoring groups, police departments, and judges themselves have pointed to a heightened 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 the current year through the third quarter, there were over five hundred incidents to 395 federal judges, giving rise to 805 inquiries. 2025 has already eclipsed the first recorded year, and last year, and is on track to exceed the previous year's high of over six hundred threats.

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

Expert Analysis on Root Causes

Specialists state that the threats are a result of the rhetoric coming from senior administration figures.

In May, the watchdog group published a detailed report alleging that “harmful and highly irresponsible statements from White House allies and supporters align with rising violent posts on online platforms.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent increase in demands for impeachment and physical intimidation against judges across digital networks from January to February of this year, the initial period of Trump’s administration.”

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

International Strongman Playbook

That march towards autocracy has been common in the past decade in several countries, including by the Salvadoran.

In several years ago, immediately after starting a second term in the face of legal bans, the president's parliamentary loyalists voted to dismiss the country’s attorney general and five judges on the supreme court. The judges, who had provoked his ire by rejecting pandemic policies, were replaced by replacements selected by the leader.

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

Undermining Court Autonomy

Experts explain 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 executive to dismiss judges Trump opposes.

Leonard, an associate professor at the university who has researched authoritarian backsliding in free nations, said the White House had learned from the models set by strongmen overseas.

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

Citing instances such as Miller’s relentless assertions of broad presidential authority, she added: “They directly criticize the courts by repeating over and over that it is not a co-equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They continue to reframe the debate by repeating their argument that the president has greater authority than this other co-equal branch, which is not how separation powers work.”

The professor said: “Judges' only protection is public trust in the legitimacy of their ability to make those decisions. Individual threats on top of eroding trust in courts may make judges think twice about judgments that go against the current administration, which is, of course, massively problematic for court oversight and for the political system.”

Coercion Methods

Scheppele, professor of social science and global studies at the Ivy League school, has written about the use of “autocratic legalism” by the likes of the Hungarian and the Russian, and has warned about escalating threats to judges in the US.

She highlighted a wave of termed “pizza doxxings” this year, in which judges have received unwanted pizza deliveries 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 the judge.

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

“US justices are guarded by the presidential protection and the Marshals Service. And these are dedicated police units that are placed institutionally inside the Department of Justice. And the former AG has been leading the attacks on federal judges.”

Administration Aims

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