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The US President rarely accepts counsel, particularly from international figures who often seek to flatter and admire the US president.

However, the Central American nation's strongman president Bukele has adopted a different strategy by calling on 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 backing from Trump allies, including an social media message by former close Trump ally the billionaire, who has in the past boosted the Salvadoran's demands to impeach US judges.

Unprecedented Threats to Judicial Independence

Analysts note that Bukele's recent intervention occur of unprecedented dangers to court autonomy and specific justices in the United States, and during a period where the president's team is using similar authoritarian methods used by rulers in countries such as Turkey, Hungary, India, and his native the Central American country to undermine government oversight.

Bukele's online statement 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 assertion that the US was “experiencing a judicial coup,” and his mockery of a federal judge's order to stop deportation flights transporting suspected undocumented individuals to his country's brutal correctional facilities.

Criticism on Oregon Justice

The Salvadoran's demand for removal was also made during social media attacks on the state's federal judge Judge Immergut by White House aide Miller, attorney general Bondi, Elon Musk, and Trump himself in a recent press gaggle.

The judge had issued injunctions blocking the administration from deploying the military reserves, initially in the state then in California. The president has been pushing to dispatch soldiers into the city, which the leader has characterized as “war-ravaged” based on limited, peaceful demonstrations outside the urban homeland security facility.

Record of Targeting Justices

The advisor, the former AG, and the entrepreneur have a history of attacking judges who have ruled against presidential directives or in other ways hindered the administration's policy goals. Prior to resuming office recently, the president urged his supporters against judges overseeing his civil and criminal trials, who were then deluged with threats and harassment.

Monitoring groups, police departments, and judges themselves have pointed to a heightened climate of risks and intimidation in the months since he returned to the presidency.

Rising Risk Data

Based on data gathered by the federal agency, in the current year through the third quarter, there were over five hundred threats to nearly four hundred US justices, leading to more than eight hundred investigations. 2025 has already eclipsed the first recorded year, and last year, and is likely to top 2023's record of over six hundred reported incidents.

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

Analyst Insights on Threat Sources

Specialists say that the threats are a result of the language coming from top government officials.

In spring, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a comprehensive report alleging that “malicious and highly irresponsible statements from White House allies and supporters coincide with escalating violent posts on online platforms.” It recorded “a 54% increase in calls for removal and physical intimidation against judges across digital networks from the first two months of this year, the first full month of Trump’s administration.”

Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of GPAHE, said: “The president's warnings against judges have certainly driven digital abuse at judges and demands for impeachment. Targeting the courts is another move in the administration's march towards strongman rule.”

Global Authoritarian Tactics

This progression towards autocracy has been well-trodden in the past decade in several countries, such as by Bukele.

In 2021, right after starting a second term in the face of legal bans, Bukele’s allies in congress voted to dismiss the nation's top prosecutor and five judges on the supreme court. The judges, who had angered him by rejecting coronavirus measures, were replaced by new appointees selected by the leader.

The action mirrored Viktor Orbán’s remodeling of the nation's judiciary in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges in 2019; and efforts at similar moves in the Middle Eastern state and Poland.

Undermining Judicial Independence

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

Leonard, an associate professor at Illinois State University who has researched democratic decline in democracies, said the Trump administration had taken cues from the examples set by authoritarians overseas.

“The administration is observing at these successes and failures. They know they’re not going to be able to enact any laws that would undermine the courts,” she said.

Pointing to examples such as the advisor's relentless claims of broad executive power, she added: “They openly criticize the courts by repeating repeatedly that it is not a equal branch in the government structure.

“They continue to reframe 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.”

Leonard said: “Justices' only protection is public trust in the legitimacy of their capacity to make those rulings. Individual threats on top of weakening institutional legitimacy may make judges hesitate about decisions that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, massively problematic for judicial review and for democracy.”

Coercion Methods

Scheppele, professor of social science and international affairs at Princeton University, has documented the use of “authoritarian law” by the likes of Orbán and the Russian, and has warned about rising threats to judges in the US.

She highlighted a wave of so-called “pizza doxxings” this year, in which judges have received unsolicited food orders with the customer listed as a name, the son of Justice Salas, who was killed at the residence in several years ago by a gunman aiming at Salas.

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

“US justices are protected by the Secret Service and the Marshals Service. And those are both dedicated law enforcement that are placed structurally inside the Department of Justice. And Pam Bondi has been spearheading the attacks on federal judges.”

Government Goals

Regarding the administration’s aims, the expert said that “removing a federal judge is almost certainly not going to happen because it’s very difficult to do. {Right now|Currently