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The US President does not usually take counsel, especially from foreign leaders who often attempt to praise and compliment the American leader.

However, the Central American nation's strongman president Nayib Bukele has adopted a different strategy by calling on the Trump administration to follow his example in impeaching so-called “dishonest judges.”

His appeal for Trump to move against the US judiciary also received support from Trump allies, such as an social media message by former supporter Elon Musk, who has previously boosted the Salvadoran's calls to oust US judges.

Growing Threats to Judicial Independence

Analysts note that Bukele's recent intervention come at a time of unmatched dangers to court autonomy and specific justices in the United States, and during a phase where the president's team is employing comparable strong-arm tactics used by leaders in countries such as Türkiye, the European state, India, and his native El Salvador to undermine government oversight.

Bukele's online statement last week was one more in a long series of provocations and claims he has leveled against the US's legal system, including a spring assertion that the US was “facing a court takeover,” and ridicule of a court's ruling to halt removal operations transporting suspected illegal immigrants to his country's harsh prison system.

Attacks on Federal Judge

The Salvadoran's demand for removal was also issued amid social media attacks on Oregon justice Karin Immergut by presidential advisor Miller, former AG Bondi, Elon Musk, and Trump himself in a recent press gaggle.

Immergut had issued restraining orders preventing Trump from deploying the military reserves, initially in the state then in the West Coast state. The president has been eager to send troops into Portland, which the president has characterized as “battle-scarred” based on small, peaceful protests outside the urban federal building.

Record of Attacking Justices

Miller, Bondi, and Musk have a history of attacking judges who have ruled against Trump's executive orders or otherwise hindered the administration's policy goals. Prior to resuming office recently, the president directed his followers against judges overseeing his legal cases, who were then inundated with threats and abuse.

Monitoring groups, law enforcement agencies, and judges themselves have highlighted a increased atmosphere of risks and intimidation in the months since he returned to the presidency.

Increasing Risk Data

Based on information collected by the US Marshals Service, in 2025 through the third quarter, there were over five hundred threats to nearly four hundred US justices, giving rise to more than eight hundred inquiries. 2025 has already eclipsed the first recorded year, and 2024, and is on track to exceed 2023's high of 630 reported incidents.

The threats are not just happening at the federal level. Information by the university's Bridging Divides Initiative shows that there have been at least fifty-nine instances of threats, targeting, stalking, or violence directed against judges on the local level in the current year.

Analyst Insights on Threat Sources

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

In May, the watchdog group published a detailed report alleging that “harmful and reckless statements from Trump administration members and allies coincide with escalating aggressive posts on social media.” It noted “a fifty-four percent increase in demands for removal and physical intimidation against judges across social media platforms from January to February of this year, the initial period of Trump’s administration.”

Beirich, the founder of GPAHE, said: “Trump’s threats against judges have certainly driven digital abuse at judges and demands for ouster. Targeting the courts is one more step in Trump’s march towards authoritarianism.”

International Authoritarian Tactics

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

In 2021, immediately after commencing a second term in the face of constitutional prohibitions, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to remove the country’s top prosecutor and five judges on the constitutional court. The justices, who had angered him by ruling against coronavirus measures, made way for new appointees selected by Bukele.

The action mirrored Viktor Orbán’s remodeling of Hungary’s court system several years back; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s court cleanups in 2019; and attempts at comparable actions in the Middle Eastern state and Poland.

Weakening Court Autonomy

Analysts explain that the threats and rhetorical attacks in the US can be viewed as efforts to weaken court autonomy in a structure that offers no easy way for the president to remove judges Trump disapproves of.

Leonard, an academic at Illinois State University who has researched authoritarian backsliding in democracies, said the White House had taken cues from the examples set by authoritarians abroad.

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

Pointing to instances such as the advisor's persistent assertions of broad presidential authority, she added: “They openly attack the courts by repeating repeatedly that it is not a equal branch in the government structure.

“They persist in redefine the debate by repeating their argument that the executive has more power than this judicial branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

Leonard said: “Justices' only protection is people’s belief in the legitimacy of their ability to make those rulings. Individual threats on top of weakening trust in courts may make judges hesitate about judgments that go against the current administration, which is, of course, highly concerning for judicial review and for the political system.”

Coercion Methods

Kim Lane Scheppele, professor of sociology and global studies at the Ivy League school, has written about the use of “authoritarian law” by the likes of the Hungarian and the Russian, and has warned about rising dangers to judges in the US.

She pointed to a series of so-called “pizza doxxings” this year, in which judges have received unwanted pizza deliveries with the customer listed as a name, the son of Justice Salas, who was killed at the residence in 2020 by a gunman aiming at Salas.

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

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

Government Goals

On the government's aims, the expert said that “removing a federal judge is highly not going to happen because it’s so hard to do. {Right now|Currently