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The US President does not usually take counsel, especially from foreign leaders who frequently seek to flatter and admire the US president.

But, the Central American nation's strongman president Nayib Bukele has followed a different approach by urging the Trump administration to emulate his actions in impeaching what he terms “dishonest judges.”

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

Growing Risks to Court Autonomy

Analysts say that Bukele's recent intervention occur of unprecedented dangers to court autonomy and specific justices in the US, and during a period where the Trump administration is using similar authoritarian tactics employed by leaders in nations such as Turkey, the European state, the Asian nation, and Bukele's own El Salvador to weaken democratic accountability.

The president's social media call last week was just the latest in a string of provocations and claims he has leveled against the US's legal system, such as a March claim that the US was “experiencing a judicial coup,” and ridicule of a federal judge's order to halt deportation flights transporting suspected undocumented individuals to his country's harsh prison system.

Criticism on Federal Judge

Bukele's impeachment call was also made during online criticism on the state's federal judge Karin Immergut by White House aide Stephen Miller, attorney general Bondi, Musk, and Trump personally in a recent press gaggle.

Immergut had issued injunctions preventing the administration from mobilizing the national guard, initially in the state then in California. Trump has been pushing to send troops into Portland, which the leader has characterized as “war-ravaged” based on limited, peaceful protests outside the city's federal building.

Record of Attacking Justices

The advisor, the former AG, and the entrepreneur have a long record of criticizing judges who have blocked Trump's executive orders or in other ways hindered the government's political agenda. Prior to returning to power recently, the president urged his supporters against judges overseeing his legal cases, who were then inundated with intimidation and abuse.

Monitoring groups, police departments, and the justices have pointed to a heightened climate of threats and coercion in the months since he re-entered the White House.

Rising Risk Data

Based on information collected by the US Marshals Service, in 2025 through the third quarter, there were over five hundred incidents to 395 federal judges, giving rise to more than eight hundred investigations. 2025 has already eclipsed the first recorded year, and 2024, and is on track to top the previous year's record of 630 reported incidents.

The threats are not only happening at the federal level. Data from Princeton's Bridging Divides Initiative shows that there have been at least fifty-nine instances of threats, harassment, surveillance, or physical attacks directed against judges on the local level 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 align with rising violent posts on online platforms.” It recorded “a 54% increase in calls for impeachment and violent threats against judges across digital networks from January to February of this year, the initial period of the president's term.”

Beirich, the co-founder of GPAHE, said: “Trump’s threats against judges have definitely fueled digital abuse at judges and demands for ouster. Targeting the judiciary is another move in Trump’s advance towards strongman rule.”

International Strongman Playbook

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

In 2021, right after commencing a new term despite legal bans, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to dismiss the country’s attorney general and several justices on the constitutional court. The judges, who had provoked his ire by ruling against pandemic policies, made way for new appointees hand picked by the leader.

The action mirrored Viktor Orbán’s remodeling of Hungary’s court system in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s court cleanups recently; and attempts at comparable actions in the Middle Eastern state and the European country.

Weakening Judicial Independence

Analysts say that the intimidation and rhetorical attacks in the US can be seen as attempts to weaken judicial independence in a structure that offers no easy way for the president to dismiss judges Trump disapproves of.

Leonard, an associate professor at the university who has researched authoritarian backsliding in democracies, said the White House had learned from the examples set by authoritarians abroad.

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

Pointing to examples such as Miller’s persistent claims of broad executive power, she noted: “They directly attack the judiciary by stating repeatedly that it is not a equal branch in the government structure.

“They continue to redefine the debate by emphasizing their argument that the executive 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 authority of their ability to make those decisions. Personal intimidation on top of weakening trust in courts may make judges hesitate about judgments that go against the current administration, which is, of course, highly concerning for judicial review and for democracy.”

Coercion Methods

Kim Lane Scheppele, academic of sociology and international affairs at Princeton University, has written about the use of “autocratic legalism” by the such as the Hungarian and Putin, and has warned about escalating threats to judges in the US.

She pointed to a wave of termed “harassment deliveries” recently, in which judges have received unwanted pizza deliveries with the recipient listed as Daniel Anderl, the child of Justice Salas, who was killed at the judge’s home in 2020 by a assailant aiming at the judge.

“All knows what it means. ‘Your address is known. You are a target,’” the professor said.

“Federal judges are guarded by the Secret Service and the Marshals Service. And those are both specialized law enforcement that sit structurally inside the federal agency. And Pam Bondi has been spearheading the attacks on justices.”

Administration Aims

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