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Donald Trump is not typically known for advice, especially from foreign leaders who often seek to praise and admire the US president.

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

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

Unprecedented Threats to Judicial Independence

Experts say that Bukele's recent remarks occur of unprecedented threats to court autonomy and individual judges in the United States, and during a period where the Trump administration is employing comparable strong-arm tactics used by rulers in countries such as Turkey, Hungary, India, and Bukele's own the Central American country to undermine government oversight.

Bukele's social media statement recently was just the latest in a long series of taunts and claims he has made against the US's legal system, such as a spring assertion that the US was “facing a court takeover,” and ridicule of a federal judge's order to halt removal operations transporting accused undocumented individuals to his country's harsh prison system.

Attacks on Federal Judge

The Salvadoran's demand for removal was also made amid online attacks on Oregon federal judge Karin Immergut by White House aide Miller, former AG Bondi, Elon Musk, and Trump personally in a latest press gaggle.

Immergut had issued restraining orders blocking Trump from deploying the military reserves, first in the state then in California. The president has been eager to dispatch soldiers into the city, which the president has characterized as “battle-scarred” based on small, peaceful demonstrations outside the city's homeland security facility.

History of Targeting Justices

Miller, Bondi, and the entrepreneur have a history of attacking judges who have ruled against presidential directives or otherwise impeded the administration's political agenda. Before resuming office recently, Trump urged his followers against judges overseeing his civil and criminal trials, who were then deluged with intimidation and abuse.

Watchdog organizations, police departments, and the justices have highlighted a heightened climate of threats and coercion in the months since he returned to the presidency.

Increasing Threat Statistics

Based on information collected by the US Marshals Service, in the current year through the third quarter, there were 562 threats to 395 US justices, giving rise to 805 investigations. This year has already surpassed the first recorded year, and last year, and is on track to top 2023's record of over six hundred reported incidents.

The threats are not just happening at the national level. Data from the university's research project shows that there have been at least 59 instances of intimidation, targeting, surveillance, or physical attacks committed against judges on the state and municipal levels in the current year.

Expert Insights on Threat Sources

Specialists state that the intimidation are a result 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 violent posts on online platforms.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent increase in calls for removal and physical intimidation against judges across social media platforms from the first two months 2025, the first full month of the president's term.”

Beirich, the co-founder of GPAHE, said: “The president's warnings against judges have certainly driven digital abuse at judges and demands for ouster. Targeting the courts is one more step in Trump’s march towards authoritarianism.”

International Strongman Tactics

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

In several years ago, right after commencing a new term despite legal bans, Bukele’s allies in congress voted to remove 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 mirrored the Hungarian leader's remodeling of the nation's judiciary in 2018; the Turkish president's judicial purges in 2019; and efforts at similar moves in the Middle Eastern state and Poland.

Weakening Judicial Independence

Experts explain that the intimidation and rhetorical attacks in the US can be viewed as efforts to undermine judicial independence in a structure that offers no easy way for the executive to dismiss judges Trump opposes.

Leonard, an academic at Illinois State University who has researched authoritarian backsliding in democracies, said the Trump administration had learned from the models set by authoritarians abroad.

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

Pointing to instances such as Miller’s persistent assertions of broad executive power, she added: “They openly attack the judiciary by stating over and over that it is not a equal branch in the separation of powers.

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

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

Intimidation Tactics

Kim Lane Scheppele, academic of sociology and international affairs at the Ivy League school, has written about the use of “autocratic legalism” by the likes of the Hungarian and the Russian, and has spoken out about rising threats to judges in the US.

She highlighted a wave of termed “harassment deliveries” recently, in which judges have received unwanted food orders with the customer listed as Daniel Anderl, the son of Justice Salas, who was murdered at the residence in 2020 by a assailant targeting the judge.

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

“Federal judges are guarded by the Secret Service and the Marshals Service. And those are both dedicated law enforcement that are placed structurally inside the Department of Justice. And the former AG has been spearheading the attacks on federal judges.”

Government Goals

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