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Donald Trump is not typically known for guidance, especially from foreign leaders who often seek to praise and admire the American leader.

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

The call for the president to take action against the US judiciary also garnered backing from Maga figures, including an X post by former supporter the billionaire, who has previously boosted Bukele's demands to impeach US judges.

Unprecedented Threats to Court Autonomy

Experts note that Bukele's latest intervention come at a time of unprecedented dangers to judicial independence and specific justices in the United States, and during a phase where the president's team is using comparable strong-arm tactics used by rulers in nations such as Turkey, the European state, the Asian nation, and his native El Salvador to weaken democratic accountability.

Bukele's online statement last week was one more in a string of provocations and allegations he has leveled against the US's legal system, such as a March claim that the US was “facing a court takeover,” and his mockery of a federal judge's ruling to halt deportation flights transporting accused illegal immigrants to his country's harsh prison system.

Attacks on Federal Judge

Bukele's demand for removal was also made during online attacks on Oregon justice Judge Immergut by White House aide Stephen Miller, former AG Pam Bondi, Musk, and Trump himself in a recent press gaggle.

The judge had ordered injunctions blocking Trump from deploying the national guard, initially in the state then in the West Coast state. The president has been eager to dispatch soldiers into the city, which the president has described as “battle-scarred” based on limited, peaceful demonstrations outside the urban federal building.

Record of Targeting Judges

Miller, the former AG, and the entrepreneur have a long record of attacking judges who have ruled against Trump's executive orders or otherwise hindered the administration's policy goals. Prior to returning to power this year, the president directed his supporters against judges overseeing his civil and criminal trials, who were then deluged with intimidation and harassment.

Monitoring groups, police departments, and the justices have pointed to a heightened atmosphere of risks and coercion in the months since he returned to the White House.

Increasing Threat Statistics

Based on information gathered by the US Marshals Service, in 2025 through the third quarter, there were 562 incidents to 395 US justices, giving rise to 805 investigations. 2025 has already eclipsed the first recorded year, and last year, and is on track to exceed 2023's record of 630 threats.

The threats are not only happening at the federal level. Data from the university's research project indicates that there have been at least 59 instances of intimidation, harassment, stalking, or physical attacks committed against judges on the local level in 2025.

Expert Insights on Threat Sources

Specialists state that the intimidation are a product of the rhetoric coming from top government officials.

In May, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a comprehensive report alleging that “harmful and reckless statements from Trump administration members and allies coincide with rising violent posts on social media.” It recorded “a 54% increase in demands for removal and violent threats against judges across digital networks from the first two months of this year, the first full month of Trump’s administration.”

Heidi Beirich, the founder of the organization, said: “Trump’s warnings against judges have definitely driven digital abuse at judges and demands for ouster. Attacking the courts is one more step in Trump’s advance towards strongman rule.”

International Strongman Tactics

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

In several years ago, right after starting a second term in the face of constitutional prohibitions, the president's parliamentary loyalists voted to dismiss the country’s top prosecutor and several judges on the supreme court. The judges, who had angered him by ruling against coronavirus measures, made way for new appointees selected by Bukele.

The action mirrored Viktor Orbán’s overhaul of the nation's judiciary several years back; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges recently; and attempts at comparable actions in Israel and Poland.

Undermining Judicial Independence

Analysts say that the threats and rhetorical attacks in the US can be viewed as efforts to weaken court autonomy in a structure that provides no simple method for the president to remove judges Trump opposes.

Meghan Leonard, an associate professor at Illinois State University who has studied authoritarian backsliding in democracies, said the White House had taken cues from the examples set by strongmen abroad.

“The government is observing at these successes and setbacks. They know they’re not going to be able to enact any legislation that would weaken the judiciary,” she said.

Pointing to examples such as the advisor's relentless assertions of broad presidential authority, she added: “They openly attack the judiciary by repeating over and over that it is not a co-equal branch in the government structure.

“They persist in reframe the discussion by repeating their claim that the executive has greater authority than this other co-equal branch, which is not how separation powers work.”

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

Intimidation Tactics

Kim Lane Scheppele, academic of sociology and international affairs at the Ivy League school, has documented the use of “autocratic legalism” by the such as the Hungarian and Putin, 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 recipient listed as a name, the son of Judge Esther Salas, who was killed at the judge’s home in several years ago by a gunman targeting the judge.

“Everyone knows what it means. ‘Your address is known. You are a target,’” the professor said.

“Federal judges are guarded by the Secret Service and the Marshals Service. And those are both dedicated law enforcement that sit institutionally inside the federal agency. And the former AG has been spearheading the attacks on federal judges.”

Administration Aims

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