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The US President is not typically known for advice, especially from international figures who frequently seek to flatter and admire the American leader.

But, the Central American nation's strongman president Nayib Bukele has adopted a different approach by calling on the Trump administration to follow his example in impeaching what he terms “corrupt judges.”

His appeal for the president to move against the US judiciary also received support from Maga figures, including an social media message by former supporter the billionaire, who has previously boosted Bukele's demands to oust US judges.

Growing Risks to Court Autonomy

Experts note that Bukele's recent remarks come at a time of unprecedented dangers to court autonomy and individual judges in the United States, and during a phase where the president's team is using similar authoritarian tactics employed by rulers in nations such as Türkiye, Hungary, the Asian nation, and his native the Central American country to undermine democratic accountability.

The president's social media statement last week was one more in a long series of provocations and claims he has leveled against the American judiciary, including a spring claim that the US was “experiencing a judicial coup,” and ridicule of a federal judge's ruling to halt removal operations sending suspected illegal immigrants to his country's harsh prison system.

Criticism on Oregon Justice

The Salvadoran's demand for removal was also issued amid online attacks on the state's justice Karin Immergut by presidential advisor Stephen Miller, former AG Pam Bondi, Musk, and Trump personally in a latest press gaggle.

The judge had ordered restraining orders preventing Trump from mobilizing the military reserves, first in the state then in California. The president has been eager to dispatch troops into the city, which the president has characterized as “war-ravaged” based on limited, non-violent demonstrations outside the city's federal building.

History of Targeting Justices

Miller, Bondi, and the entrepreneur have a history of criticizing judges who have ruled against Trump's executive orders or in other ways hindered the administration's political agenda. Before returning to power recently, the president urged his followers against judges presiding over his civil and criminal trials, who were then inundated with intimidation and harassment.

Watchdog organizations, police departments, and the justices have highlighted a increased climate of risks and coercion in the months since he returned to the White House.

Rising Risk Data

According to data gathered by the federal agency, in the current year through the end of September, there were over five hundred incidents to nearly four hundred federal judges, leading to more than eight hundred investigations. 2025 has already surpassed 2022, and 2024, and is on track to top the previous year's high of 630 reported incidents.

The dangers are not just happening at the national level. Information by Princeton's Bridging Divides Initiative indicates that there have been at least fifty-nine cases of threats, targeting, stalking, or physical attacks committed against judges on the local level in 2025.

Expert Analysis on Threat Sources

Experts state that the intimidation are a product of the language coming from top government officials.

In spring, the watchdog group published a detailed report alleging that “malicious and reckless statements from Trump administration members and allies coincide with rising violent posts on social media.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent rise in calls for impeachment and physical intimidation against judges across social media platforms from January to February 2025, the first full month of Trump’s administration.”

Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of GPAHE, said: “The president's threats against judges have definitely driven online vitriol at judges and calls for ouster. Targeting the judiciary is another move in the administration's march towards strongman rule.”

Global Strongman Tactics

That march towards authoritarianism has been common in the past decade in several nations, including by the Salvadoran.

In several years ago, immediately after commencing a new term despite constitutional prohibitions, the president's allies in congress voted to remove the nation's top prosecutor and several judges on the supreme court. The justices, who had provoked his ire by rejecting coronavirus measures, made way for replacements hand picked by Bukele.

The move mirrored Viktor Orbán’s overhaul of the nation's judiciary several years back; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s court cleanups recently; and efforts at comparable actions in the Middle Eastern state and the European country.

Weakening Court Autonomy

Analysts explain that the threats and rhetorical attacks in the US can be seen as efforts to weaken judicial independence in a system that provides no simple method for the president to remove judges the administration opposes.

Leonard, an associate professor at the university who has studied democratic decline in democracies, said the White House had learned from the examples set by strongmen abroad.

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

Pointing to instances such as the advisor's persistent assertions of nearly limitless executive power, she noted: “They directly attack the judiciary by repeating over and over that it is not a equal branch in the government structure.

“They persist in reframe the discussion by repeating their argument that the executive has more power than this other co-equal branch, which is not how checks and balances 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 trust in courts may make judges think twice about judgments that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, massively problematic for court oversight and for the political system.”

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 Orbán and Putin, and has spoken out about rising threats to judges in the US.

She pointed to a series of so-called “harassment deliveries” this year, in which judges have received unwanted pizza deliveries with the customer listed as Daniel Anderl, the child of Judge Esther Salas, who was murdered at the judge’s home in 2020 by a assailant targeting the judge.

“All understands what it means. ‘Your address is known. We’re coming for you,’” 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 Department of Justice. And Pam Bondi has been leading the attacks on federal judges.”

Government Goals

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