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Donald Trump is not typically known for guidance, especially from international figures who frequently seek to flatter and compliment the American leader.

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

His appeal for the president to move against the American court system also garnered support from Trump allies, such as an social media message by former supporter Elon Musk, who has in the past amplified the Salvadoran's demands to oust US judges.

Growing Risks to Judicial Independence

Analysts note that the leader's recent intervention come at a time of unmatched threats to court autonomy and individual judges in the United States, and during a phase where the president's team is using comparable authoritarian tactics used by rulers in countries such as Türkiye, the European state, the Asian nation, and Bukele's own El Salvador to undermine democratic accountability.

Bukele's social media statement last week was just the latest in a long series of provocations and allegations he has made against the US's legal system, including a March assertion that the US was “facing a judicial coup,” and his mockery of a federal judge's order to stop deportation flights transporting accused undocumented individuals to his country's brutal correctional facilities.

Criticism on Oregon Justice

The Salvadoran's impeachment call was also made amid social media criticism on the state's justice Judge Immergut by White House aide Miller, former AG Bondi, Musk, and the president himself in a recent media briefing.

The judge had issued injunctions preventing Trump from deploying the national guard, initially in Oregon then in the West Coast state. The president has been pushing to dispatch soldiers into the city, which the president has characterized as “war-ravaged” based on limited, peaceful protests outside the city's homeland security facility.

History of Attacking Justices

Miller, Bondi, and Musk have a long record of criticizing judges who have blocked Trump's executive orders or otherwise hindered the administration's political agenda. Before resuming office recently, Trump directed his supporters against judges presiding over his legal cases, who were then deluged with threats and harassment.

Monitoring groups, law enforcement agencies, and the justices have highlighted a increased atmosphere of risks and intimidation in the months since he re-entered the White House.

Rising Risk Data

According to data collected by the federal agency, in 2025 through the third quarter, there were 562 threats to 395 federal judges, leading to more than eight hundred investigations. This year has already eclipsed 2022, and last year, and is on track to top 2023's high of 630 reported incidents.

The threats are not just happening at the national level. Data from Princeton's Bridging Divides Initiative indicates that there have been at least 59 instances of intimidation, targeting, surveillance, or violence committed against judges on the local level in 2025.

Expert Analysis on Threat Sources

Specialists state that the threats are a product of the language coming from senior administration figures.

In May, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a detailed report alleging that “malicious and reckless statements from Trump administration members and supporters align with escalating aggressive posts on social media.” It noted “a fifty-four percent 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.”

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

International Strongman Playbook

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

In several years ago, right after starting a second term despite constitutional prohibitions, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to dismiss the nation's top prosecutor and five judges on the supreme court. The judges, who had provoked his ire by rejecting pandemic policies, were replaced by new appointees hand picked by Bukele.

The move mirrored Viktor Orbán’s overhaul of Hungary’s court system in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges recently; and efforts at similar moves in the Middle Eastern state and the European country.

Undermining Court Autonomy

Experts explain that the intimidation and verbal assaults in the US can be viewed as efforts to undermine judicial independence in a system that offers no easy way for the president to remove judges Trump disapproves of.

Meghan Leonard, an academic at Illinois State University who has researched authoritarian backsliding in democracies, said the White House had learned from the examples set by strongmen overseas.

“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 relentless assertions of broad presidential authority, she added: “They openly attack the judiciary by stating over and over that it is not a co-equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They persist in redefine the discussion by repeating their claim that the executive has more power than this judicial branch, which is not how separation powers work.”

Leonard said: “Judges' only protection is public trust in the legitimacy of their capacity to make those decisions. Individual threats on top of weakening institutional legitimacy may make judges hesitate about decisions that go against the current administration, which is, of course, highly concerning for court oversight and for democracy.”

Intimidation Tactics

Kim Lane Scheppele, professor of sociology and global studies at Princeton University, has documented the use of “autocratic legalism” by the likes of the Hungarian and Putin, and has spoken out about escalating dangers to judges in the US.

She pointed to a series of termed “pizza doxxings” this year, in which judges have received unwanted pizza deliveries with the recipient listed as Daniel Anderl, the son of Justice Salas, who was killed at the judge’s home in 2020 by a gunman aiming at Salas.

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

“Federal judges are guarded by the presidential protection and the Marshals Service. And those are both specialized law enforcement that sit institutionally inside the Department of Justice. And Pam Bondi has been spearheading the attacks on justices.”

Administration Aims

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