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The US President rarely accepts advice, especially from foreign leaders who often attempt to flatter and compliment the US president.

But, the Central American nation's authoritarian leader Nayib Bukele has followed a distinct strategy by calling on the Trump administration to emulate his actions in removing so-called “dishonest judges.”

His appeal for Trump to move against the American court system also received backing from Maga figures, including an social media message by former supporter Elon Musk, who has previously boosted the Salvadoran's demands to impeach US judges.

Unprecedented Threats to Court Autonomy

Analysts say that the leader's latest remarks occur of unprecedented dangers to judicial independence and individual judges in the US, and during a phase where the Trump administration is using comparable authoritarian methods employed by rulers in countries such as Türkiye, Hungary, India, and his native the Central American country to weaken government oversight.

Bukele's social media call last week was one more in a long series of taunts and claims he has made against the US's legal system, such as a March claim that the US was “experiencing a judicial coup,” and his mockery of a federal judge's ruling to halt deportation flights sending suspected illegal immigrants to his nation's brutal correctional facilities.

Attacks on Oregon Justice

The Salvadoran's impeachment call was also issued amid online attacks on Oregon federal judge Judge Immergut by White House aide Stephen Miller, former AG Bondi, Musk, and Trump personally in a latest media briefing.

Immergut had issued injunctions blocking the administration from mobilizing the military reserves, first in Oregon then in California. Trump has been pushing to send troops into the city, which the leader has characterized as “war-ravaged” based on limited, peaceful protests outside the city's homeland security facility.

Record of Targeting 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 impeded the administration's policy goals. Prior to returning to power recently, Trump urged his followers against judges presiding over his legal cases, who were then inundated with threats and abuse.

Watchdog organizations, law enforcement agencies, and the justices have highlighted a heightened climate of risks and coercion in the months since he returned to the presidency.

Increasing Risk Data

Based on data gathered by the federal agency, in the current year through the end of September, there were over five hundred threats to nearly four hundred US justices, leading to 805 investigations. 2025 has already eclipsed the first recorded year, and last year, and is on track to exceed the previous year's record of 630 threats.

The dangers are not just happening at the national level. Information by Princeton's Bridging Divides Initiative indicates that there have been at least 59 cases of threats, harassment, stalking, or violence committed against judges on the state and municipal levels in 2025.

Analyst Analysis on Threat Sources

Specialists say that the intimidation are a product of the language coming from senior administration figures.

In spring, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a detailed report alleging that “malicious and reckless statements from White House allies and allies align with escalating violent posts on online platforms.” It noted “a fifty-four percent rise in demands for removal and physical intimidation against judges across social media platforms from the first two months of this year, the first full month of Trump’s administration.”

Beirich, the founder of GPAHE, said: “Trump’s threats against judges have definitely fueled digital abuse at judges and calls for impeachment. Attacking the judiciary is one more step in the administration's march towards authoritarianism.”

Global Authoritarian Playbook

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

In 2021, immediately after commencing a new term despite legal bans, the president's parliamentary loyalists voted to remove the nation's attorney general and five justices on the supreme court. The judges, who had angered him by rejecting pandemic policies, made way for replacements hand picked by the leader.

The action mirrored the Hungarian leader's remodeling of Hungary’s court system in 2018; the Turkish president's judicial purges in 2019; and efforts at similar moves in the Middle Eastern state and the European country.

Undermining Court Autonomy

Experts say that the intimidation and verbal assaults in the US can be viewed as efforts to undermine judicial independence in a structure that provides no simple method for the president to remove judges the administration disapproves of.

Meghan Leonard, an associate professor at Illinois State University who has researched authoritarian backsliding in democracies, said the Trump administration had learned 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 judiciary,” she said.

Citing examples such as Miller’s persistent assertions of broad presidential authority, she noted: “They openly attack the judiciary by repeating over and over that it is not a equal branch in the separation of powers.

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

The professor said: “Judges' only protection is public trust in the legitimacy of their ability to make those rulings. Personal intimidation on top of eroding trust in courts may make judges think twice about decisions that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, massively problematic for judicial review and for the political system.”

Coercion Methods

Scheppele, professor of sociology and global studies at the Ivy League school, has written about the use of “autocratic legalism” by the likes of Orbán and Putin, and has spoken out about escalating 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 Daniel Anderl, the child of Judge Esther Salas, who was killed at the residence in several years ago by a gunman aiming at Salas.

“All knows what it means. ‘Your address is known. You are a target,’” Scheppele said.

“Federal judges are protected by the presidential protection and the Marshals Service. And those are both dedicated police units that sit institutionally inside the federal agency. And the former AG has been leading the criticism on federal judges.”

Government Goals

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