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The US President is not typically known for guidance, particularly from international figures who often attempt to praise and admire the American leader.

However, the Central American nation's strongman president Nayib Bukele has adopted a different strategy by calling on the Trump administration to emulate his actions in impeaching what he terms “dishonest judges.”

The call for the president to move against the US judiciary also received backing from Trump allies, including an social media message by former supporter the billionaire, who has in the past amplified the Salvadoran's demands to oust US judges.

Growing Threats to Judicial Independence

Analysts say that Bukele's latest intervention occur of unprecedented threats to court autonomy and individual judges in the US, and during a phase where the president's team is using similar authoritarian methods employed by leaders in nations such as Türkiye, Hungary, the Asian nation, and his native the Central American country to undermine government oversight.

The president's online statement recently was just the latest in a long series of provocations and allegations he has leveled against the American judiciary, including a March claim that the US was “facing a court takeover,” and his mockery of a federal judge's order to stop deportation flights sending suspected undocumented individuals to his country's brutal prison system.

Attacks on Oregon Justice

Bukele's impeachment call was also made during social media attacks on the state's justice Karin Immergut by White House aide Miller, attorney general Pam Bondi, Elon Musk, and Trump himself in a latest press gaggle.

The judge had issued injunctions blocking the administration from mobilizing the national guard, first in the state then in California. Trump has been pushing to dispatch soldiers into Portland, which the leader has characterized as “battle-scarred” based on small, peaceful protests outside the city's federal building.

History 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 impeded the administration's political agenda. Before returning to power recently, Trump urged his supporters against judges presiding over his legal cases, who were then inundated with threats and abuse.

Monitoring groups, law enforcement agencies, and the justices have highlighted a heightened climate of threats and intimidation in the period since he returned to the White House.

Increasing Threat Statistics

According to data gathered by the US Marshals Service, in the current year through the end of September, there were 562 threats to 395 US justices, giving rise to more than eight hundred inquiries. 2025 has already eclipsed the first recorded year, and last year, and is likely to top 2023's record of 630 threats.

The threats are not only happening at the federal level. Data from the university's Bridging Divides Initiative shows that there have been at least 59 cases of threats, harassment, stalking, or violence directed against judges on the state and municipal levels in the current year.

Analyst Insights on Threat Sources

Specialists say that the threats are a result of the rhetoric coming from senior administration figures.

In May, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) 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% rise in demands for impeachment and physical intimidation against judges across social media platforms from January to February 2025, the initial period of Trump’s administration.”

Beirich, the founder of the organization, said: “Trump’s threats against judges have certainly fueled online vitriol at judges and demands for impeachment. Targeting the judiciary is another move in the administration's march towards authoritarianism.”

International Authoritarian Playbook

That march towards autocracy has been well-trodden in the past decade in multiple nations, including by the Salvadoran.

In 2021, immediately after commencing a new term despite constitutional prohibitions, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to remove the country’s attorney general and several judges on the supreme court. The justices, who had angered him by rejecting pandemic policies, made way for replacements selected by Bukele.

The action echoed Viktor Orbán’s remodeling of the nation's judiciary in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s court cleanups recently; and efforts at comparable actions in Israel and Poland.

Weakening Judicial Independence

Experts say that the threats and verbal assaults in the US can be viewed as attempts to undermine court autonomy in a structure that provides no simple method for the executive to dismiss judges Trump disapproves of.

Meghan Leonard, an academic at the university who has studied authoritarian backsliding in free nations, said the Trump administration had taken cues from the examples set by strongmen 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.

Pointing to examples such as the advisor's relentless assertions of nearly limitless presidential authority, she noted: “They openly attack the judiciary by repeating repeatedly that it is not a equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They persist in redefine the debate by repeating their argument that the executive has more power than this other co-equal branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

The professor said: “Judges' sole safeguard is public trust in the authority of their ability to make those decisions. 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 the political system.”

Coercion Methods

Kim Lane Scheppele, professor of sociology and international affairs at Princeton University, has documented the use of “autocratic legalism” by the likes of Orbán and Putin, and has spoken out about rising dangers to judges in the US.

She highlighted a series of termed “pizza doxxings” recently, in which judges have received unwanted food orders with the recipient listed as a name, the son of Judge Esther Salas, who was killed at the residence in 2020 by a gunman aiming at Salas.

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

“Federal judges are protected by the Secret Service and the federal police. And these are dedicated law enforcement that are placed institutionally inside the federal agency. And the former AG has been spearheading the attacks on justices.”

Administration Aims

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