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Donald Trump is not typically known for guidance, especially from foreign leaders who frequently seek to praise and admire the US president.

However, the Central American nation's strongman president Nayib Bukele has adopted a different approach by urging the Trump administration to emulate his actions in removing what he terms “corrupt judges.”

The call for the president to move against the US judiciary also received support from Maga figures, such as an X post by former close Trump ally the billionaire, who has in the past amplified the Salvadoran's calls to impeach US judges.

Unprecedented Risks to Judicial Independence

Experts say that the leader's latest remarks come at a time of unprecedented threats to court autonomy and specific justices in the United States, and during a period where the president's team is employing comparable strong-arm methods employed by rulers in nations such as Turkey, Hungary, India, and his native the Central American country to weaken government oversight.

Bukele's social media statement last week was just the latest in a string of provocations and claims he has made against the American judiciary, including a spring claim that the US was “facing a court takeover,” and his mockery of a court's order to halt deportation flights sending accused undocumented individuals to his country's brutal correctional facilities.

Criticism on Federal Judge

The Salvadoran's impeachment call was also made during online attacks on Oregon federal judge Karin Immergut by White House aide Stephen Miller, attorney general Bondi, Elon Musk, and the president himself in a recent media briefing.

Immergut had ordered injunctions preventing Trump from mobilizing the national guard, first in Oregon then in the West Coast state. The president has been pushing to dispatch soldiers into Portland, which the leader has characterized as “war-ravaged” based on small, peaceful protests outside the urban federal building.

History of Targeting Justices

The advisor, the former AG, and Musk have a history of attacking judges who have blocked Trump's executive orders or in other ways impeded the government's policy goals. Prior to returning to power recently, the president urged his supporters against judges overseeing his civil and criminal trials, who were then deluged with threats and harassment.

Monitoring groups, police departments, and judges themselves have highlighted a increased climate of risks and intimidation in the period since he returned to the presidency.

Rising Risk Data

According to information gathered by the federal agency, in 2025 through the third quarter, there were over five hundred threats to 395 US justices, leading to 805 inquiries. This year has already surpassed the first recorded year, and last year, and is likely to top 2023's record of over six hundred threats.

The dangers are not just happening at the national level. Data from the university's Bridging Divides Initiative indicates that there have been at least fifty-nine instances of intimidation, harassment, stalking, or physical attacks directed against judges on the state and municipal levels in the current year.

Expert Analysis on Root Causes

Experts say that the threats are a result of the rhetoric coming from top government officials.

In spring, the watchdog group published a comprehensive report claiming that “malicious and reckless statements from White House allies and supporters coincide with escalating violent posts on online platforms.” It noted “a fifty-four percent rise in calls for impeachment and physical intimidation against judges across social media platforms from the first two months 2025, the initial period of the president's term.”

Beirich, the founder of GPAHE, said: “Trump’s warnings against judges have definitely fueled digital abuse at judges and calls for impeachment. Targeting the courts is another move in the administration's advance towards authoritarianism.”

International Authoritarian Playbook

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

In 2021, right after starting a second term despite constitutional prohibitions, the president's allies in congress voted to dismiss the nation's top prosecutor and five justices on the constitutional court. The justices, who had angered him by rejecting coronavirus measures, were replaced by new appointees selected by the leader.

The action mirrored Viktor Orbán’s overhaul of the nation's judiciary in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s court cleanups in 2019; and efforts at comparable actions in the Middle Eastern state and the European country.

Weakening Judicial Independence

Analysts say that the intimidation and verbal assaults in the US can be viewed as efforts to weaken judicial independence in a structure that provides no simple method for the executive to remove judges Trump opposes.

Meghan Leonard, an associate professor at Illinois State University who has studied democratic decline in free nations, said the White House had learned from the examples set by authoritarians overseas.

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

Citing examples such as Miller’s relentless assertions of nearly limitless executive power, she noted: “They directly criticize the courts by repeating 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 executive has more power than this judicial branch, which is not how separation powers work.”

Leonard said: “Justices' sole safeguard is people’s belief in the authority of their capacity 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, massively problematic for judicial review and for the political system.”

Coercion Methods

Scheppele, academic of social science and international affairs at the Ivy League school, has documented the use of “authoritarian law” by the likes of Orbán and the Russian, and has spoken out about rising dangers to judges in the US.

She pointed to a series of so-called “pizza doxxings” recently, in which judges have received unwanted pizza deliveries with the customer listed as Daniel Anderl, the son of Judge Esther Salas, who was murdered at the judge’s home in 2020 by a gunman aiming at the judge.

“Everyone knows what it means. ‘We know where you live. You are a target,’” Scheppele said.

“Federal judges are guarded by the presidential protection and the federal police. And those are both specialized law enforcement that sit structurally inside the Department of Justice. And Pam Bondi has been leading the criticism on justices.”

Government Goals

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