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The US President is not typically known for counsel, especially from international figures who frequently seek to praise and compliment the American leader.

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

The call for Trump to move against the US judiciary also received support from Maga figures, including an social media message by one-time supporter the billionaire, who has previously amplified Bukele's calls to impeach US judges.

Unprecedented Threats to Judicial Independence

Analysts say that the leader's recent intervention occur of unprecedented threats to judicial independence and specific justices in the US, and during a phase where the Trump administration is employing similar authoritarian tactics used by leaders in nations such as Turkey, Hungary, India, and his native El Salvador to weaken democratic accountability.

The president's online call recently was just the latest in a string of taunts and allegations he has leveled against the US's legal system, such as a spring claim that the US was “facing a judicial coup,” and ridicule of a court's ruling to halt deportation flights transporting accused illegal immigrants to his nation's harsh prison system.

Attacks on Oregon Justice

Bukele's impeachment call was also issued amid social media attacks on the state's justice Karin Immergut by White House aide Stephen Miller, attorney general Bondi, Elon Musk, and the president personally in a recent media briefing.

Immergut had ordered restraining orders preventing Trump from deploying the national guard, first in Oregon then in the West Coast state. The president has been eager to send troops into Portland, which the president has characterized as “war-ravaged” based on small, non-violent protests outside the city's federal building.

Record of Targeting Judges

Miller, Bondi, and Musk have a long record of criticizing judges who have ruled against Trump's executive orders or in other ways hindered the administration's policy goals. Before resuming office recently, the president directed his supporters against judges overseeing his civil and criminal trials, who were then inundated with intimidation and harassment.

Monitoring groups, police departments, and judges themselves have pointed to a increased climate of risks and intimidation in the months since he re-entered the presidency.

Rising Threat Statistics

Based on information gathered by the US Marshals Service, in 2025 through the end of September, there were over five hundred threats to 395 federal judges, leading to 805 inquiries. This year has already eclipsed 2022, and 2024, and is on track to exceed 2023's record of over six hundred reported incidents.

The threats are not only happening at the federal level. Information by the university's Bridging Divides Initiative indicates that there have been at least 59 cases of threats, harassment, surveillance, or violence directed against judges on the local level in the current year.

Expert Insights on Root Causes

Specialists say that the threats are a result of the language coming from top government officials.

In spring, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a comprehensive report alleging that “malicious and reckless statements from Trump administration members and allies coincide with escalating violent posts on online platforms.” It recorded “a 54% rise 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.”

Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of the organization, said: “The president's threats against judges have definitely fueled digital abuse at judges and calls for ouster. Attacking the courts is another move in Trump’s advance towards authoritarianism.”

International Authoritarian Playbook

That march towards authoritarianism has been well-trodden in the past decade in multiple nations, including by Bukele.

In 2021, right after commencing a second term in the face of legal bans, the president's allies in congress voted to remove the country’s attorney general and five judges on the supreme court. The judges, who had angered him by ruling against pandemic policies, were replaced by replacements hand picked by Bukele.

The move mirrored Viktor Orbán’s overhaul of Hungary’s court system several years back; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges in 2019; and efforts at comparable actions in the Middle Eastern state and Poland.

Weakening Court Autonomy

Experts say that the intimidation and rhetorical attacks in the US can be seen as efforts to weaken judicial independence in a system that offers no easy way for the executive to remove judges the administration opposes.

Leonard, an associate professor at the university who has studied democratic decline in free nations, said the White House had learned from the models set by authoritarians overseas.

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

Citing examples such as the advisor's persistent claims of nearly limitless presidential authority, she added: “They openly attack the judiciary by repeating over and over that it is not a co-equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They persist in reframe the debate by repeating their claim that the executive has greater authority than this judicial branch, which is not how separation powers work.”

The professor said: “Justices' sole safeguard is public trust in the authority of their capacity to make those rulings. Personal intimidation on top of weakening institutional legitimacy may make judges think twice about judgments that go against the current administration, which is, of course, massively problematic for judicial review and for the political system.”

Coercion Methods

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

She highlighted a wave of termed “pizza doxxings” this year, in which judges have received unwanted pizza deliveries with the recipient listed as Daniel Anderl, the child of Judge Esther Salas, who was murdered at the judge’s home in 2020 by a assailant targeting Salas.

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

“Federal judges are guarded by the Secret Service and the Marshals Service. And these are dedicated law enforcement that are placed structurally inside the federal agency. And Pam Bondi has been spearheading the criticism on federal judges.”

Administration Aims

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