The US President is not typically known for guidance, particularly from international figures who often attempt to flatter and admire the US president.
However, El Salvador's strongman president Nayib Bukele has adopted a distinct approach by urging the Trump administration to follow his example in removing so-called “corrupt judges.”
The call for Trump to move against the American court system also garnered support from Maga figures, such as an X post by one-time supporter Elon Musk, who has in the past boosted the Salvadoran's calls to impeach US judges.
Experts note that the leader's recent intervention occur of unmatched threats to judicial independence and individual judges in the United States, and during a phase where the president's team is employing similar authoritarian tactics used by leaders in nations such as Türkiye, the European state, the Asian nation, and his native El Salvador to undermine government oversight.
The president's online call last week was one more in a long series of taunts and claims he has made against the US's legal system, such as a spring claim that the US was “facing a court takeover,” and his mockery of a federal judge's ruling to halt removal operations transporting accused undocumented individuals to his nation's harsh prison system.
Bukele's impeachment call was also made during online criticism on the state's federal judge Judge Immergut by White House aide Stephen Miller, attorney general Bondi, Elon Musk, and the president personally in a latest media briefing.
The judge had ordered injunctions blocking Trump from deploying the national guard, first in the state then in the West Coast state. Trump has been pushing to send troops into Portland, which the leader has described as “battle-scarred” based on small, peaceful demonstrations outside the city's homeland security facility.
The advisor, the former AG, and Musk have a history of criticizing judges who have ruled against Trump's executive orders or otherwise hindered the government's political agenda. Before returning to power this year, Trump directed his followers against judges overseeing his civil and criminal trials, who were then inundated with threats and harassment.
Monitoring groups, law enforcement agencies, and the justices have pointed to a heightened climate of risks and coercion in the months since he re-entered the presidency.
According to data collected by the federal agency, in the current year through the third quarter, there were over five hundred threats to 395 US justices, giving rise to more than eight hundred investigations. 2025 has already surpassed 2022, and last year, and is on track to top the previous year's record of 630 reported incidents.
The dangers are not only happening at the federal level. Data from the university's research project indicates that there have been at least 59 cases of intimidation, harassment, surveillance, or physical attacks committed against judges on the local level in the current year.
Experts state that the intimidation are a result of the rhetoric coming from senior administration figures.
In spring, the watchdog group published a comprehensive report claiming that “harmful and highly irresponsible statements from Trump administration members and supporters align with rising violent posts on online platforms.” It recorded “a 54% increase in demands for impeachment and violent threats against judges across digital networks from the first two months 2025, the initial period of Trump’s administration.”
Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of the organization, said: “Trump’s warnings against judges have definitely driven online vitriol at judges and calls for ouster. Targeting the judiciary is one more step in the administration's advance towards authoritarianism.”
This progression towards authoritarianism has been well-trodden in the past decade in multiple countries, including by Bukele.
In 2021, right after starting a new term in the face of constitutional prohibitions, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to dismiss the country’s attorney general and five judges on the constitutional court. The judges, who had provoked his ire by rejecting coronavirus measures, made way for new appointees hand picked by Bukele.
The action mirrored Viktor Orbán’s overhaul of Hungary’s court system several years back; the Turkish president's judicial purges recently; and efforts at similar moves in Israel and Poland.
Experts say that the intimidation and rhetorical attacks in the US can be viewed as efforts to undermine court autonomy in a structure that offers no easy way for the president to remove judges Trump opposes.
Leonard, an academic at Illinois State University who has researched authoritarian backsliding in free nations, said the White House had taken cues from the models set by authoritarians abroad.
“The administration is observing at these achievements and failures. They know they’re not going to be able to pass any legislation that would weaken the judiciary,” she said.
Pointing to instances such as Miller’s persistent assertions of nearly limitless executive power, she noted: “They directly attack the judiciary by stating repeatedly that it is not a co-equal branch in the government structure.
“They persist in reframe the debate by repeating their claim that the president has greater authority than this judicial branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”
Leonard said: “Judges' sole safeguard is people’s belief in the authority of their ability to make those rulings. Individual threats on top of eroding institutional legitimacy may make judges hesitate about decisions that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, massively problematic for judicial review and for the political system.”
Kim Lane Scheppele, professor of social science and global studies at Princeton University, has written about the use of “autocratic legalism” by the likes of Orbán and Putin, and has spoken out about escalating threats to judges in the US.
She pointed to a wave of so-called “pizza doxxings” recently, 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 judge’s home in 2020 by a gunman targeting the judge.
“Everyone knows what it means. ‘Your address is known. You are a target,’” the professor said.
“US justices are protected by the Secret Service and the federal police. And these are dedicated law enforcement that sit institutionally inside the Department of Justice. And the former AG has been leading the attacks on justices.”
On the government's aims, Scheppele said that “impeaching a US justice is highly not going to happen because it’s so hard to do. {Right now|Currently
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