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Donald Trump does not usually take advice, particularly from foreign leaders who frequently attempt to praise and compliment the US president.

However, the Central American nation's strongman president Nayib Bukele has adopted a different approach by urging the White House to emulate his actions in removing what he terms “corrupt judges.”

His appeal for the president to move against the US judiciary also garnered backing from Trump allies, including an X post by one-time close Trump ally the billionaire, who has in the past boosted Bukele's demands to oust US judges.

Growing Risks to Judicial Independence

Analysts note that Bukele's latest intervention occur of unprecedented threats to court autonomy and individual judges in the US, and during a period where the president's team is employing comparable authoritarian methods used by leaders in nations such as Türkiye, Hungary, the Asian nation, and Bukele's own El Salvador to weaken government oversight.

The president's online statement last week was one more in a long series of provocations and allegations he has leveled against the US's legal system, including a March claim that the US was “facing a court takeover,” and ridicule of a court's ruling to halt removal operations sending accused undocumented individuals to his country's harsh correctional facilities.

Criticism on Oregon Justice

The Salvadoran's impeachment call was also made amid social media criticism on the state's federal judge Karin Immergut by presidential advisor Miller, former AG Bondi, Elon Musk, and the president personally in a latest media briefing.

Immergut had ordered restraining orders blocking the administration from deploying the national guard, first in Oregon then in the West Coast state. The president has been eager to dispatch troops into the city, which the leader has characterized as “battle-scarred” based on small, non-violent demonstrations outside the urban federal building.

History of Targeting Judges

Miller, Bondi, and Musk have a history of criticizing judges who have blocked Trump's executive orders or in other ways impeded the administration's political agenda. Prior to returning to power this year, the president directed his followers against judges presiding over his legal cases, who were then deluged with threats and abuse.

Monitoring groups, police departments, and judges themselves have highlighted a heightened atmosphere of risks and intimidation 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 threats to nearly four hundred US justices, giving rise to more than eight hundred investigations. 2025 has already eclipsed the first recorded year, and last year, and is likely to exceed the previous year's record of 630 threats.

The threats are not only happening at the national level. Information by Princeton's Bridging Divides Initiative shows that there have been at least fifty-nine cases of intimidation, targeting, stalking, or violence committed against judges on the state and municipal levels in 2025.

Expert Insights on Threat Sources

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

In spring, the watchdog group published a comprehensive report alleging that “malicious and highly irresponsible statements from Trump administration members and supporters coincide with escalating violent posts on social media.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent rise in calls for removal and physical intimidation against judges across digital networks from January to February of this year, the initial period of Trump’s administration.”

Beirich, the co-founder of the organization, said: “The president's warnings against judges have certainly fueled online vitriol at judges and calls for ouster. Targeting the courts is one more step in Trump’s march towards strongman rule.”

International Strongman Tactics

That march towards authoritarianism has been common in recent years in multiple nations, 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 country’s top prosecutor and five justices on the constitutional court. The justices, who had angered him by rejecting pandemic policies, were replaced by new appointees hand picked by Bukele.

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 the European country.

Undermining Judicial Independence

Experts explain that the intimidation and verbal assaults in the US can be seen as efforts to undermine judicial independence in a structure that provides no simple method for the executive to dismiss judges Trump opposes.

Leonard, an associate professor at Illinois State University who has studied democratic decline in democracies, said the White House had learned from the models set by strongmen overseas.

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

Pointing to instances such as Miller’s persistent assertions of broad presidential authority, she noted: “They openly attack the judiciary by repeating repeatedly that it is not a co-equal branch in the government structure.

“They persist in reframe the debate by emphasizing their argument that the president has greater authority than this judicial branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

The professor said: “Judges' sole safeguard is public trust in the legitimacy of their ability to make those decisions. Individual threats on top of eroding trust in courts may make judges hesitate about decisions that go against the current administration, which is, of course, highly concerning for court oversight and for the political system.”

Coercion Methods

Scheppele, academic of sociology and global studies at Princeton University, has documented the use of “authoritarian law” by the likes of the Hungarian and the Russian, 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 unsolicited food orders with the recipient listed as Daniel Anderl, the child of Judge Esther Salas, who was murdered at the residence in 2020 by a assailant aiming at Salas.

“All understands what it means. ‘Your address is known. We’re coming for you,’” the professor said.

“US justices are protected by the Secret Service and the federal police. And these are dedicated law enforcement that are placed structurally inside the Department of Justice. And Pam Bondi has been leading the attacks on justices.”

Government Goals

Regarding the government's objectives, the expert said that “removing a federal judge is highly not going to happen because it’s very difficult to do. {Right now|Currently