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The US President rarely accepts advice, especially from international figures who often attempt to flatter and compliment the US president.

But, the Central American nation's authoritarian leader Nayib Bukele has adopted a distinct approach by calling on the White House to emulate his actions in impeaching what he terms “dishonest judges.”

His appeal for Trump to move against the American court system also garnered support from Trump allies, including an X post by former close Trump ally the billionaire, who has previously boosted the Salvadoran's demands to oust US judges.

Growing Risks to Judicial Independence

Analysts say that the leader's latest remarks come at a time of unmatched dangers to judicial independence and individual judges in the US, and during a phase where the Trump administration is employing similar strong-arm methods employed by leaders in nations such as Turkey, the European state, the Asian nation, and his native El Salvador to weaken government oversight.

Bukele's social media call last week was one more in a long series of provocations and allegations he has made against the US's legal system, including a spring assertion that the US was “facing a judicial coup,” and his mockery of a court's order to stop removal operations sending accused illegal immigrants to his nation's brutal prison system.

Criticism on Federal Judge

Bukele's demand for removal was also issued amid online criticism on Oregon justice Judge Immergut by White House aide Stephen Miller, attorney general Pam Bondi, Musk, and Trump personally in a recent press gaggle.

Immergut had ordered restraining orders preventing Trump from mobilizing the national guard, first in the state then in the West Coast state. Trump has been pushing to send soldiers into Portland, which the leader has described as “battle-scarred” based on limited, non-violent demonstrations outside the urban federal building.

History of Targeting Judges

The advisor, the former AG, and Musk have a long record of attacking judges who have ruled against presidential directives or in other ways impeded the administration's political agenda. Before returning to power this year, 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 pointed to a increased atmosphere of threats and intimidation in the period since he re-entered the White House.

Rising Risk Data

Based on data collected by the federal agency, in the current year through the end of September, there were over five hundred incidents to nearly four hundred US justices, giving rise to 805 inquiries. 2025 has already surpassed the first recorded year, and last year, and is on track to top the previous year's record of 630 threats.

The dangers are not only happening at the federal level. Data from the university's research project indicates that there have been at least 59 cases of intimidation, targeting, stalking, or violence directed against judges on the local level in 2025.

Expert Analysis on Threat Sources

Specialists state that the intimidation are a result of the rhetoric coming from top government officials.

In spring, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a detailed report claiming that “harmful 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 social media platforms from January to February of this year, the initial period of Trump’s administration.”

Beirich, the founder of GPAHE, said: “Trump’s threats against judges have certainly fueled digital abuse at judges and calls for ouster. Targeting the courts is another move in Trump’s march towards strongman rule.”

International Authoritarian Tactics

This progression towards autocracy has been common in the past decade in multiple countries, including by the Salvadoran.

In 2021, immediately after commencing a new term despite legal bans, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to dismiss the country’s top prosecutor and several justices on the supreme court. The justices, who had provoked his ire by ruling against pandemic policies, made way for replacements hand picked by the leader.

The move 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 Poland.

Weakening Judicial Independence

Experts explain that the threats and verbal assaults in the US can be seen as efforts to weaken judicial independence in a structure that provides no simple method for the president to remove judges Trump disapproves of.

Meghan Leonard, an associate professor at Illinois State University who has researched democratic decline in free nations, said the White House had taken cues from the models set by authoritarians abroad.

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

Pointing to examples such as Miller’s persistent claims of broad presidential authority, she noted: “They directly attack the courts by stating repeatedly that it is not a equal branch in the government structure.

“They persist in redefine the debate by repeating their argument that the executive has more power than this other co-equal branch, which is not how separation powers work.”

Leonard said: “Judges' sole safeguard is public trust in the authority of their capacity to make those rulings. Personal intimidation 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.”

Intimidation Tactics

Kim Lane Scheppele, academic of social science and global studies at the Ivy League school, has documented the use of “autocratic legalism” by the likes of the Hungarian and the Russian, and has spoken out about rising threats to judges in the US.

She pointed to a wave of so-called “pizza doxxings” this year, in which judges have received unwanted pizza deliveries with the customer listed as a name, the son of Judge Esther Salas, who was killed at the residence in several years ago by a gunman targeting Salas.

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

“Federal judges are protected by the Secret Service and the Marshals Service. And those are both dedicated police units that sit structurally inside the federal agency. And the former AG has been spearheading the criticism on federal judges.”

Government Goals

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