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The US President rarely accepts counsel, 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 followed a distinct approach by urging the Trump administration to follow his example in removing what he terms “dishonest judges.”

His appeal for the president to take action against the US judiciary also received support from Maga figures, including an social media message by former close Trump ally Elon Musk, who has previously amplified Bukele's calls to impeach US judges.

Growing Threats to Judicial Independence

Experts note that the leader's latest remarks occur of unmatched dangers to court autonomy and specific justices in the United States, and during a phase where the president's team is using similar strong-arm methods employed by leaders in countries such as Turkey, Hungary, India, and his native El Salvador to weaken government oversight.

The president's social media call last week was just the latest in a long series of provocations and claims he has made against the American judiciary, including a March assertion that the US was “facing a judicial coup,” and his mockery of a court's order to stop removal operations transporting accused undocumented individuals to his nation's brutal correctional facilities.

Criticism on Federal Judge

Bukele's impeachment call was also issued amid social media attacks on Oregon justice Karin Immergut by White House aide Miller, former AG Bondi, Elon Musk, and Trump himself in a recent press gaggle.

Immergut had ordered injunctions preventing Trump from deploying the national guard, first in Oregon then in the West Coast state. The president has been eager to send troops into the city, which the leader has characterized as “war-ravaged” based on limited, non-violent demonstrations outside the city's federal building.

Record of Targeting Justices

Miller, Bondi, and the entrepreneur have a long record of attacking judges who have blocked presidential directives or in other ways hindered the administration's policy goals. Before resuming office recently, Trump urged his followers against judges presiding over his civil and criminal trials, who were then inundated with intimidation and abuse.

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

Increasing Risk Data

Based on information gathered by the US Marshals Service, in the current year through the end of September, there were over five hundred threats to nearly four hundred US justices, leading to 805 inquiries. This year has already eclipsed the first recorded year, and 2024, and is on track to exceed the previous year's high of over six hundred reported incidents.

The dangers are not only happening at the national level. Information by Princeton's Bridging Divides Initiative indicates that there have been at least fifty-nine instances of threats, harassment, stalking, or violence directed against judges on the local level in 2025.

Analyst Insights on Root Causes

Experts state that the threats are a result of the rhetoric coming from senior administration figures.

In spring, the watchdog group published a detailed report alleging that “harmful and highly irresponsible statements from White House allies and supporters align with rising violent posts on online platforms.” It noted “a 54% increase in demands for impeachment and physical intimidation against judges across social media platforms from January to February 2025, the first full month of the president's term.”

Beirich, the co-founder of the organization, said: “Trump’s threats against judges have certainly fueled online vitriol at judges and demands for ouster. Attacking the courts is another move in Trump’s march towards strongman rule.”

International Strongman Tactics

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

In several years ago, immediately after starting a new term in the face of legal bans, the president's allies in congress voted to remove the nation's top prosecutor and five justices on the supreme court. The justices, who had angered him by rejecting coronavirus measures, made way for new appointees selected by Bukele.

The move mirrored Viktor Orbán’s remodeling of the nation's judiciary several years back; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges recently; and attempts at similar moves in the Middle Eastern state and Poland.

Undermining Court Autonomy

Analysts say that the threats and verbal assaults in the US can be seen as efforts to weaken court autonomy in a system that offers no easy way for the president to dismiss judges Trump opposes.

Leonard, an associate professor at the university who has researched democratic decline in democracies, said the White House had taken cues from the models set by authoritarians overseas.

“The government is looking around at these achievements and setbacks. They know they’re not going to be able to enact any laws that would undermine the courts,” she said.

Citing examples such as the advisor's persistent assertions of nearly limitless executive power, she noted: “They directly attack the judiciary by repeating repeatedly that it is not a equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They continue to reframe the discussion by emphasizing 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' only protection is public trust in the authority of their capacity to make those decisions. Individual threats on top of eroding trust in courts may make judges think twice about decisions that go against the current administration, which is, of course, massively problematic for court oversight and for the political system.”

Coercion Methods

Kim Lane Scheppele, professor of social science and global studies at Princeton University, has written about the use of “autocratic legalism” by the such as the Hungarian and the Russian, and has warned about rising threats to judges in the US.

She pointed to a series of termed “harassment deliveries” recently, in which judges have received unsolicited pizza deliveries with the customer listed as a name, the son of Justice Salas, who was killed at the judge’s home in 2020 by a assailant targeting Salas.

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

“US justices are guarded by the presidential protection and the federal police. And those are both specialized law enforcement that are placed institutionally inside the federal agency. And Pam Bondi has been leading 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