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

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

The call for Trump to move against the American court system also garnered support from Trump allies, such as an social media message by one-time supporter Elon Musk, who has previously boosted Bukele's demands to impeach US judges.

Growing Risks to Judicial Independence

Analysts say that Bukele's recent remarks occur of unmatched threats to judicial independence and specific justices in the US, and during a phase where the president's team is employing comparable authoritarian tactics employed by rulers in nations such as Turkey, the European state, the Asian nation, and his native El Salvador to undermine democratic accountability.

The president's social media statement last week was one more in a string of taunts and allegations he has leveled against the American judiciary, including a spring assertion that the US was “experiencing a court takeover,” and ridicule of a court's order to stop removal operations transporting suspected undocumented individuals to his nation's harsh correctional facilities.

Criticism on Oregon Justice

Bukele's impeachment call was also made during online attacks on the state's federal judge Karin Immergut by White House aide Miller, attorney general Bondi, Musk, and the president himself in a latest media briefing.

The judge had issued restraining orders blocking Trump from deploying the national guard, initially in the state then in the West Coast state. The president has been pushing to send soldiers into Portland, which the leader has described as “war-ravaged” based on small, non-violent protests outside the urban federal building.

Record of Attacking Justices

Miller, the former AG, and the entrepreneur have a history of criticizing judges who have ruled against Trump's executive orders or in other ways hindered the administration's policy goals. Before resuming office recently, Trump urged his followers against judges presiding over his legal cases, who were then inundated with threats and harassment.

Monitoring groups, law enforcement agencies, and the justices have pointed to a increased atmosphere of risks and coercion in the period since he re-entered the presidency.

Increasing Threat Statistics

According to information gathered by the federal agency, in 2025 through the third quarter, there were over five hundred threats to 395 federal judges, giving rise to more than eight hundred investigations. 2025 has already eclipsed 2022, and 2024, and is on track to exceed the previous year's high of over six hundred reported incidents.

The threats are not only happening at the national level. Data from Princeton's Bridging Divides Initiative shows that there have been at least 59 cases of threats, targeting, surveillance, or physical attacks committed against judges on the local level in the current year.

Analyst Analysis on Threat Sources

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

In May, the watchdog group published a detailed report claiming that “malicious and reckless statements from Trump administration members and allies align with rising violent posts on online platforms.” It noted “a fifty-four percent rise in demands for impeachment and violent threats against judges across social media platforms from the first two months 2025, the initial period of the president's term.”

Beirich, the co-founder of the organization, said: “Trump’s threats 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 strongman rule.”

International Strongman Tactics

This progression towards autocracy has been well-trodden in the past decade in multiple nations, such as by the Salvadoran.

In 2021, right 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 several judges on the supreme court. The justices, who had angered him by rejecting pandemic policies, made way for new appointees hand picked by Bukele.

The action mirrored the Hungarian leader's overhaul of the nation's judiciary several years back; the Turkish president's court cleanups in 2019; and attempts at comparable actions in Israel and the European country.

Weakening Judicial Independence

Experts explain that the intimidation and verbal assaults in the US can be seen as attempts to weaken court autonomy in a system that provides no simple method for the executive to dismiss judges the administration disapproves of.

Meghan Leonard, an academic at Illinois State University who has researched authoritarian backsliding in free nations, said the White House had learned from the examples set by authoritarians abroad.

“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 undermine the courts,” she said.

Citing examples such as Miller’s persistent claims of nearly limitless presidential authority, she added: “They openly attack the judiciary by stating over and over that it is not a equal branch in the government structure.

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

Leonard said: “Judges' only protection is people’s belief in the legitimacy of their ability to make those rulings. Personal intimidation on top of eroding institutional legitimacy may make judges hesitate about judgments that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, highly concerning for court oversight and for democracy.”

Intimidation Tactics

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

She pointed to a series of termed “pizza doxxings” this year, in which judges have received unsolicited pizza deliveries with the customer listed as Daniel Anderl, the son of Justice Salas, who was murdered at the residence in 2020 by a gunman targeting the judge.

“All knows what it means. ‘Your address is known. We’re coming for you,’” the professor said.

“US justices are protected by the presidential protection and the federal police. And those are both dedicated police units that sit structurally inside the Department of Justice. And Pam Bondi has been leading the attacks on justices.”

Administration Aims

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