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The US President rarely accepts guidance, particularly from international figures who often seek to flatter and admire the American leader.

But, the Central American nation's strongman president Nayib Bukele has followed a distinct approach by urging the White House to follow his example in impeaching so-called “dishonest judges.”

His appeal for the president to take action against the American court system also received backing from Trump allies, such as an social media message by one-time close Trump ally the billionaire, who has in the past boosted the Salvadoran's demands to oust US judges.

Growing Risks to Judicial Independence

Analysts note that the leader's latest intervention come at a time of unmatched threats to judicial independence and individual judges in the United States, and during a phase where the Trump administration is employing similar authoritarian methods used by rulers in nations such as Turkey, Hungary, India, and his native El Salvador to undermine democratic accountability.

Bukele's social media call recently was just the latest in a string of provocations and allegations he has leveled against the US's legal system, including a March claim that the US was “facing a court takeover,” and ridicule of a court's ruling to stop removal operations transporting accused illegal immigrants to his country's brutal correctional facilities.

Criticism on Federal Judge

Bukele's impeachment call was also made amid online criticism on the state's justice Judge Immergut by White House aide Miller, attorney general Bondi, Musk, and Trump personally in a recent media briefing.

Immergut had issued restraining orders preventing Trump from deploying the national guard, initially in Oregon then in the West Coast state. The president has been eager to dispatch troops into Portland, which the leader has described as “war-ravaged” based on small, non-violent protests outside the city's homeland security facility.

Record of Targeting Judges

The advisor, Bondi, and the entrepreneur have a long record of criticizing judges who have blocked Trump's executive orders or in other ways impeded the administration's political agenda. Before returning to power this year, the president urged his supporters against judges presiding over his legal cases, who were then inundated with intimidation and abuse.

Monitoring groups, police departments, and judges themselves have highlighted a increased climate of risks and coercion in the months since he returned to the White House.

Rising Threat Statistics

According to information collected by the US Marshals Service, in 2025 through the third quarter, there were 562 incidents to nearly four hundred US justices, leading to more than eight hundred investigations. This year has already eclipsed the first recorded year, and 2024, and is on track to exceed 2023's high of over six hundred threats.

The dangers are not just happening at the national level. Data from Princeton's research project shows that there have been at least fifty-nine instances of intimidation, targeting, stalking, or violence committed against judges on the state and municipal levels in 2025.

Expert Insights on Root Causes

Specialists state that the intimidation are a product of the rhetoric coming from top government officials.

In May, the watchdog group published a detailed report claiming that “harmful and reckless statements from Trump administration members and supporters align with escalating violent posts on social media.” It noted “a fifty-four percent increase in calls for removal and violent threats against judges across social media platforms from January to February of this year, the initial period of the president's term.”

Beirich, the founder of GPAHE, said: “Trump’s warnings against judges have definitely driven online vitriol at judges and demands for impeachment. Targeting the judiciary is another move in Trump’s advance towards strongman rule.”

Global Strongman Tactics

That march towards autocracy has been well-trodden in recent years in several countries, including by Bukele.

In 2021, immediately after commencing a new term despite constitutional prohibitions, the president's parliamentary loyalists voted to dismiss the country’s attorney general and five justices on the constitutional court. The judges, who had angered him by ruling against pandemic policies, made way for replacements hand picked by Bukele.

The action mirrored Viktor Orbán’s overhaul of Hungary’s court system in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges in 2019; and attempts at similar moves in Israel and Poland.

Weakening Court Autonomy

Experts say that the threats and rhetorical attacks in the US can be viewed as efforts to undermine court autonomy in a system that provides no simple method for the executive to remove judges Trump disapproves of.

Leonard, an academic at the university who has researched democratic decline in democracies, said the Trump administration had learned from the examples set by strongmen overseas.

“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 Miller’s relentless claims of nearly limitless executive power, she added: “They directly attack the judiciary by stating repeatedly that it is not a co-equal branch in the government structure.

“They continue to reframe the discussion by repeating their claim that the president has more power than this other co-equal branch, which is not how separation powers work.”

Leonard said: “Judges' only protection is people’s belief in the authority of their ability to make those rulings. Individual threats on top of weakening trust in courts may make judges think twice about judgments that go against the current administration, which is, of course, massively problematic for court oversight and for democracy.”

Coercion Methods

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

She pointed to a series of so-called “pizza doxxings” this year, in which judges have received unwanted food orders with the customer listed as a name, the son of Justice Salas, who was murdered at the judge’s home in several years ago by a assailant targeting Salas.

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

“Federal judges are guarded by the Secret Service and the federal police. And those are both specialized police units that are placed structurally inside the federal agency. And Pam Bondi has been spearheading the criticism on federal judges.”

Administration Aims

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