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The US President rarely accepts guidance, especially from international figures who often attempt to flatter and compliment the US president.

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

The call for the president to move against the US judiciary also received support from Maga figures, including an social media message by former supporter the billionaire, who has in the past boosted Bukele's demands to impeach US judges.

Unprecedented Risks to Judicial Independence

Analysts say that the leader's recent intervention come at a time of unprecedented threats to judicial independence and specific justices in the United States, and during a period where the Trump administration is employing comparable strong-arm methods used by leaders in nations such as Türkiye, Hungary, India, and Bukele's own El Salvador to undermine government oversight.

The president's online call last week was just the latest in a long series of taunts and allegations he has leveled against the American judiciary, such as a March assertion that the US was “facing a judicial coup,” and his mockery of a federal judge's order to halt removal operations transporting accused illegal immigrants to his country's brutal correctional facilities.

Criticism on Oregon Justice

Bukele's impeachment call was also issued amid online attacks on Oregon federal judge Karin Immergut by presidential advisor Stephen Miller, attorney general Bondi, Musk, and Trump personally in a latest media briefing.

The judge had issued restraining orders blocking Trump from deploying the national guard, initially in Oregon then in the West Coast state. The president has been eager to send soldiers into the city, which the leader has described as “battle-scarred” based on small, peaceful protests outside the city's federal building.

History of Attacking Justices

The advisor, Bondi, 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 political agenda. Before returning to power this year, Trump urged his supporters against judges overseeing his legal cases, who were then deluged with threats and harassment.

Monitoring groups, police departments, and judges themselves have pointed to a heightened atmosphere of risks and coercion in the period since he re-entered the White House.

Increasing Threat Statistics

Based on information collected by the US Marshals Service, in 2025 through the third quarter, there were over five hundred incidents to nearly four hundred US justices, giving rise to more than eight hundred inquiries. This year has already surpassed 2022, and last year, and is likely to top the previous year's record of over six hundred threats.

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

Analyst Insights on Threat Sources

Experts say that the threats are a product of the language coming from senior administration figures.

In spring, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a comprehensive report alleging that “malicious and reckless statements from Trump administration members and allies align with rising violent posts on social media.” It noted “a fifty-four percent rise in calls for impeachment and violent threats against judges across digital networks from January to February 2025, the first full month of the president's term.”

Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of the organization, said: “The president's warnings against judges have certainly fueled online vitriol at judges and calls for impeachment. Targeting the judiciary is one more step in Trump’s advance towards strongman rule.”

Global Authoritarian Playbook

That march towards authoritarianism has been well-trodden in recent years in several nations, including by the Salvadoran.

In several years ago, right after starting a new term in the face of legal bans, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to remove the country’s top prosecutor and several judges on the supreme court. The justices, who had angered him by rejecting pandemic policies, made way for replacements hand picked by Bukele.

The move mirrored Viktor Orbán’s remodeling of Hungary’s court system in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s court cleanups in 2019; and attempts at similar moves in the Middle Eastern state and Poland.

Undermining Judicial Independence

Experts explain that the threats and rhetorical attacks in the US can be seen as efforts to weaken court autonomy in a system that provides no simple method for the president to remove judges the administration opposes.

Leonard, an academic at Illinois State University who has studied democratic decline in democracies, said the White House had taken cues from the examples set by strongmen overseas.

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

Pointing to instances such as the advisor's persistent assertions of broad presidential authority, she noted: “They openly criticize the judiciary by stating repeatedly that it is not a co-equal branch in the government structure.

“They continue to reframe the debate by repeating their argument that the president has greater authority than this other co-equal branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

Leonard said: “Justices' sole safeguard is public trust in the authority of their ability to make those decisions. Individual threats on top of weakening institutional legitimacy may make judges think twice about decisions that go against the current administration, which is, of course, massively problematic for court oversight and for democracy.”

Intimidation Tactics

Scheppele, professor of social science and global studies at the Ivy League school, has written about the use of “autocratic legalism” by the such as the Hungarian and Putin, and has warned about escalating dangers to judges in the US.

She highlighted a wave of so-called “pizza doxxings” recently, in which judges have received unsolicited food orders with the recipient listed as Daniel Anderl, the son of Justice Salas, who was killed at the residence in 2020 by a assailant targeting Salas.

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

“US justices are protected by the Secret Service and the federal police. And those are both specialized police units that are placed structurally inside the Department of Justice. And the former AG has been leading the attacks on federal judges.”

Administration Aims

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