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The US President is not typically known for advice, especially from international figures who frequently seek to praise and admire the US president.

However, the Central American nation's authoritarian leader Nayib Bukele has adopted a distinct approach by urging the White House to emulate his actions in removing what he terms “dishonest judges.”

The call for Trump to take action against the US judiciary also received support from Maga figures, such as an social media message by former close Trump ally the billionaire, who has previously amplified Bukele's demands to oust US judges.

Unprecedented Risks to Court Autonomy

Analysts say that the leader's recent intervention occur of unmatched dangers to judicial independence and specific justices in the US, and during a period where the Trump administration is using comparable strong-arm tactics used by rulers in countries such as Türkiye, the European state, the Asian nation, and Bukele's own the Central American country to weaken government oversight.

Bukele's social media statement last week was one more in a string of taunts and allegations he has made against the American judiciary, such as a March claim that the US was “facing a court takeover,” and his mockery of a court's ruling to halt deportation flights sending suspected illegal immigrants to his country's brutal correctional facilities.

Attacks on Oregon Justice

Bukele's impeachment call was also issued amid social media attacks on the state's justice Karin Immergut by White House aide Stephen Miller, attorney general Bondi, Musk, and Trump personally in a latest press gaggle.

Immergut had issued restraining orders preventing the administration from deploying the national guard, first in Oregon then in the West Coast state. The president has been eager to send troops into Portland, which the president has characterized as “war-ravaged” based on limited, peaceful protests outside the urban federal building.

History of Targeting Judges

The advisor, Bondi, and the entrepreneur have a long record of criticizing judges who have ruled against Trump's executive orders or in other ways hindered the government's political agenda. Prior to returning to power recently, the president urged his followers against judges presiding over his civil and criminal trials, who were then deluged with intimidation and harassment.

Monitoring groups, police departments, and the justices have highlighted a increased climate of threats and intimidation in the months since he returned to the White House.

Rising Risk Data

According to information collected by the federal agency, in 2025 through the end of September, there were 562 incidents to 395 federal judges, giving rise to 805 inquiries. 2025 has already eclipsed the first recorded year, and 2024, and is on track to exceed 2023's high of over six hundred reported incidents.

The dangers are not just happening at the federal level. Data from Princeton's Bridging Divides Initiative indicates that there have been at least 59 cases of threats, harassment, surveillance, or violence committed against judges on the local level in 2025.

Analyst Insights on Threat Sources

Experts state that the threats are a product of the language coming from top government officials.

In spring, the watchdog group published a comprehensive report claiming that “malicious and reckless statements from Trump administration members and supporters coincide with escalating violent posts on social media.” It recorded “a 54% rise in demands for impeachment and violent threats against judges across digital networks from the first two months of this year, the initial period of the president's term.”

Heidi Beirich, the founder of GPAHE, said: “The president's warnings against judges have definitely fueled online vitriol at judges and calls for ouster. Targeting the judiciary is one more step in the administration's advance towards authoritarianism.”

Global Strongman Tactics

This progression towards autocracy has been well-trodden in the past decade in several countries, including by the Salvadoran.

In several years ago, immediately after commencing a new term in the face of constitutional prohibitions, the president's parliamentary loyalists voted to remove the nation's top prosecutor and five judges on the supreme court. The justices, who had angered him by ruling against pandemic policies, were replaced by replacements selected by the leader.

The move echoed the Hungarian leader's remodeling of Hungary’s court system in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s court cleanups in 2019; and efforts at comparable actions in Israel and the European country.

Undermining Judicial Independence

Analysts explain that the threats and verbal assaults in the US can be seen as efforts to weaken court autonomy in a structure that provides no simple method for the president to dismiss judges the administration opposes.

Leonard, an academic at Illinois State University who has studied authoritarian backsliding in free nations, said the Trump administration had learned from the models set by strongmen abroad.

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

Pointing to instances such as the advisor's persistent assertions of nearly limitless presidential authority, she added: “They directly criticize the courts by repeating over and over that it is not a co-equal branch in the government structure.

“They continue to reframe the debate by repeating their argument that the president has more power than this judicial branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

Leonard said: “Judges' only protection is public trust in the legitimacy of their capacity to make those rulings. Individual threats on top of eroding trust in courts may make judges think twice about decisions that go against the current administration, which is, of course, highly concerning for judicial review and for the political system.”

Coercion Methods

Kim Lane Scheppele, academic of sociology and global studies at Princeton University, 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 termed “pizza doxxings” recently, in which judges have received unwanted food orders with the customer listed as Daniel Anderl, the son of Justice Salas, who was killed at the residence in several years ago by a gunman aiming at Salas.

“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 are placed structurally inside the federal agency. And Pam Bondi has been spearheading the criticism on federal judges.”

Government Goals

On the government's objectives, the expert said that “removing a federal judge is highly not going to happen because it’s so hard to do. {Right now|Currently