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The US President is not typically known for guidance, particularly from foreign leaders who frequently attempt to flatter and admire the US president.

However, the Central American nation's authoritarian leader Nayib Bukele has adopted a distinct strategy by urging the White House to follow his example in impeaching what he terms “dishonest judges.”

The call for the president to move against the US judiciary also garnered support from Trump allies, including an X post by former supporter Elon Musk, who has in the past amplified Bukele's calls to impeach US judges.

Growing Threats to Judicial Independence

Analysts note that Bukele's recent intervention occur of unprecedented threats to court autonomy and specific justices in the US, and during a phase where the president's team is employing comparable authoritarian tactics used by rulers in nations such as Turkey, Hungary, India, and his native El Salvador to undermine democratic accountability.

The president's social media statement recently was one more in a string of taunts and claims he has made against the US's legal system, such as a March assertion that the US was “facing a court takeover,” and his mockery of a federal judge's order to stop removal operations sending accused illegal immigrants to his country's harsh correctional facilities.

Criticism on Federal Judge

Bukele's impeachment call was also issued amid online attacks on Oregon federal judge Judge Immergut by White House aide Miller, attorney general Pam Bondi, Elon Musk, and Trump personally in a latest press gaggle.

The judge had ordered injunctions blocking the administration from mobilizing the national guard, first in the state then in the West Coast state. The president has been pushing to send troops into Portland, which the leader has described as “war-ravaged” based on small, non-violent demonstrations outside the urban federal building.

History of Attacking Justices

Miller, Bondi, and Musk have a long record of criticizing judges who have blocked presidential directives or in other ways hindered the government's policy goals. Before returning to power recently, the president urged his followers against judges presiding over his civil and criminal trials, who were then deluged with intimidation and abuse.

Watchdog organizations, law enforcement agencies, and judges themselves have pointed to a heightened climate of risks and coercion in the period since he re-entered the presidency.

Increasing Risk Data

Based on information gathered by the US Marshals Service, in 2025 through the third quarter, there were over five hundred incidents to 395 federal judges, leading to 805 inquiries. 2025 has already surpassed the first recorded year, and 2024, and is on track to top the previous year's high of over six hundred threats.

The threats are not just happening at the national level. Data from Princeton's research project indicates that there have been at least 59 cases of intimidation, targeting, stalking, or violence committed against judges on the local level in the current year.

Expert Insights on Threat Sources

Experts state that the threats are a product of the rhetoric coming from top government officials.

In May, the watchdog group published a comprehensive report claiming that “malicious and highly irresponsible statements from White House allies and allies align with rising aggressive posts on social media.” It noted “a 54% rise in demands for removal and physical intimidation against judges across digital networks from January to February 2025, the first full month of the president's term.”

Beirich, the co-founder of the organization, said: “The president's threats against judges have definitely driven digital abuse at judges and demands for ouster. Targeting the judiciary is another move in the administration's advance towards authoritarianism.”

Global Authoritarian Playbook

This progression towards autocracy has been well-trodden in the past decade in multiple nations, including by Bukele.

In several years ago, immediately after starting a second term in the face of constitutional prohibitions, the president's allies in congress voted to dismiss the nation's attorney general and several judges on the constitutional court. The justices, who had provoked his ire by rejecting pandemic policies, were replaced by replacements hand picked by Bukele.

The action echoed Viktor Orbán’s remodeling of the nation's judiciary in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges recently; and attempts at similar moves in Israel and the European country.

Weakening Court Autonomy

Analysts explain that the threats and verbal assaults in the US can be seen as efforts to undermine court autonomy in a structure that offers no easy way for the executive to dismiss judges the administration disapproves of.

Meghan Leonard, an associate professor at Illinois State University who has studied authoritarian backsliding in democracies, said the Trump administration had learned from the examples set by strongmen abroad.

“The administration is looking around at these achievements 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 relentless assertions of broad executive power, she added: “They directly criticize the courts by repeating over and over that it is not a co-equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They persist in redefine the discussion by emphasizing their claim that the president has more power than this other co-equal branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

The professor said: “Judges' only protection is people’s belief in the legitimacy of their ability to make those rulings. Individual threats on top of weakening institutional legitimacy may make judges think twice about decisions that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, highly concerning for judicial review and for the political system.”

Coercion Methods

Kim Lane Scheppele, academic of sociology and global studies at Princeton University, has written about the use of “authoritarian law” by the likes of the Hungarian and the Russian, and has spoken out about escalating threats to judges in the US.

She highlighted a series of so-called “pizza doxxings” this year, in which judges have received unwanted food orders with the customer listed as Daniel Anderl, the child of Justice Salas, who was murdered at the residence in several years ago by a assailant aiming at the judge.

“All knows what it means. ‘We know where you live. We’re coming for you,’” the professor said.

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

Government Goals

On the administration’s objectives, Scheppele said that “removing a US justice is almost certainly not going to happen because it’s very difficult to do. {Right now|Currently