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

But, the Central American nation's strongman president Nayib Bukele has adopted a distinct strategy by calling on the White House to emulate his actions in impeaching so-called “dishonest judges.”

His appeal for the president to move against the American court system also garnered backing from Maga figures, including an X post by former supporter Elon Musk, who has in the past boosted the Salvadoran's calls to impeach US judges.

Unprecedented Risks to Court Autonomy

Experts note that the leader's latest remarks occur of unmatched threats to judicial independence and individual judges in the United States, and during a period where the Trump administration is employing similar strong-arm tactics used by rulers in nations such as Türkiye, the European state, the Asian nation, and Bukele's own El Salvador to weaken democratic accountability.

The president's online statement last week was one more in a string of provocations and claims he has made against the American judiciary, including a March assertion that the US was “facing a court takeover,” and ridicule of a court's order to stop removal operations sending suspected undocumented individuals to his country's brutal prison system.

Criticism on Oregon Justice

Bukele's demand for removal was also made amid online attacks on the state's federal judge Karin Immergut by presidential advisor Miller, former AG Bondi, Elon Musk, and the president himself in a recent press gaggle.

Immergut had ordered injunctions preventing Trump from mobilizing the military reserves, initially in the state then in the West Coast state. Trump has been pushing to send soldiers into Portland, which the leader has described as “war-ravaged” based on small, peaceful demonstrations outside the city's federal building.

History of Targeting Justices

The advisor, the former AG, and Musk have a history of attacking judges who have ruled against Trump's executive orders or in other ways impeded the government's policy goals. Before returning to power this year, Trump directed his followers against judges overseeing his legal cases, who were then deluged with intimidation and abuse.

Monitoring groups, law enforcement agencies, and the justices have highlighted a heightened climate of risks and intimidation in the months since he re-entered the White House.

Rising Threat Statistics

According to data collected by the federal agency, in the current year through the end of September, there were 562 incidents to 395 US justices, giving rise to more than eight hundred investigations. This year has already surpassed the first recorded year, and 2024, and is on track to top the previous year's high of over six hundred reported incidents.

The dangers are not just happening at the national level. Data from Princeton's research project indicates that there have been at least fifty-nine cases of threats, harassment, surveillance, or violence directed against judges on the state and municipal levels in the current year.

Expert Insights on Threat Sources

Experts state that the threats are a product of the rhetoric coming from senior administration figures.

In spring, the watchdog group published a comprehensive report alleging that “malicious and highly irresponsible statements from Trump administration members and supporters align with rising violent posts on online platforms.” It noted “a fifty-four percent rise in calls for impeachment and violent threats against judges across social media platforms from January to February 2025, the initial period of the president's term.”

Beirich, the founder of the organization, said: “The president's warnings against judges have definitely driven digital abuse at judges and demands for impeachment. Attacking the judiciary is another move in the administration's march towards authoritarianism.”

Global Strongman Tactics

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

In 2021, immediately after starting a new term in the face of legal bans, the president's allies in congress voted to dismiss the nation's attorney general and five justices on the supreme court. The judges, who had angered him by rejecting coronavirus measures, were replaced by replacements selected 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 comparable actions in Israel and Poland.

Weakening Court Autonomy

Analysts explain that the threats and verbal assaults in the US can be viewed as attempts to weaken judicial independence in a system that provides no simple method for the president to remove judges Trump opposes.

Leonard, an academic at the university who has studied democratic decline in democracies, said the Trump administration had taken cues from the models set by authoritarians abroad.

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

Pointing to instances such as Miller’s relentless claims of nearly limitless executive power, she added: “They openly attack the courts by repeating over and over that it is not a equal branch in the government structure.

“They persist in reframe the discussion by emphasizing their claim 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 capacity to make those rulings. Individual threats on top of weakening trust in courts may make judges hesitate about decisions that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, massively problematic for court oversight and for democracy.”

Intimidation Tactics

Scheppele, professor of sociology and global studies at the Ivy League school, has written about the use of “autocratic legalism” by the likes of the Hungarian and Putin, and has warned about escalating dangers to judges in the US.

She highlighted a wave of so-called “pizza doxxings” this year, in which judges have received unsolicited pizza deliveries with the customer listed as a name, the child of Judge Esther Salas, who was murdered at the judge’s home in 2020 by a assailant targeting Salas.

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

“Federal judges are guarded by the presidential protection and the federal police. And those are both specialized police units that sit institutionally inside the Department of Justice. And Pam Bondi has been spearheading the criticism on federal judges.”

Administration Aims

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