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Donald Trump rarely accepts advice, especially from international figures who frequently seek to flatter and compliment the US president.

But, the Central American nation's strongman president Nayib Bukele has followed a different strategy by urging the White House to emulate his actions in impeaching what he terms “dishonest judges.”

The call for the president to take action against the US judiciary also garnered support from Trump allies, such as an social media message by former supporter the billionaire, who has in the past boosted the Salvadoran's demands to impeach US judges.

Unprecedented Threats to Judicial Independence

Experts say that Bukele's latest intervention occur of unprecedented threats to court autonomy and individual judges in the United States, and during a period where the president's team is employing similar strong-arm methods used by rulers in nations such as Turkey, the European state, India, and his native the Central American country to weaken democratic accountability.

The president's social media call last week was just the latest in a long series of taunts and allegations he has made against the US's legal system, such as a spring assertion that the US was “facing a judicial coup,” and ridicule of a court's ruling to halt deportation flights sending suspected undocumented individuals to his country's harsh prison system.

Attacks on Federal Judge

The Salvadoran's demand for removal was also issued during online criticism on Oregon federal judge Judge Immergut by presidential advisor Stephen Miller, former AG Pam Bondi, Elon Musk, and the president himself in a latest press gaggle.

The judge had issued restraining orders blocking the administration from deploying the national guard, initially in Oregon then in the West Coast state. The president has been pushing to dispatch soldiers into the city, which the president has characterized as “war-ravaged” based on small, non-violent protests outside the urban federal building.

Record of Targeting Judges

Miller, the former AG, and Musk have a history of attacking judges who have blocked presidential directives or in other ways impeded the government's policy goals. Before resuming office this year, the president directed his followers against judges overseeing his legal cases, who were then deluged with intimidation and abuse.

Watchdog organizations, police departments, and judges themselves have pointed to a increased atmosphere of threats and intimidation in the period since he re-entered the presidency.

Rising Risk Data

According to data collected by the federal agency, in 2025 through the third quarter, there were 562 threats to 395 US justices, giving rise to 805 investigations. This year has already surpassed 2022, and last year, and is on track to exceed the previous year's record of over six hundred reported incidents.

The threats are not only happening at the national level. Information by the university's Bridging Divides Initiative shows that there have been at least 59 instances of intimidation, harassment, surveillance, or physical attacks directed against judges on the local level in the current year.

Expert Analysis on Root Causes

Specialists state that the threats are a result of the language coming from senior administration figures.

In spring, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a detailed report alleging that “harmful and highly irresponsible statements from White House allies and supporters align with rising violent posts on social media.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent rise in demands for impeachment and physical intimidation against judges across social media platforms from January to February of this year, the initial period of the president's term.”

Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of the organization, said: “The president's warnings against judges have definitely driven digital abuse at judges and calls for ouster. Targeting the courts is one more step in the administration's advance towards authoritarianism.”

International Authoritarian Playbook

That march towards authoritarianism has been common in the past decade in several nations, such as by Bukele.

In several years ago, immediately after commencing a second term in the face of legal bans, the president's allies in congress voted to dismiss the country’s attorney general and five judges on the constitutional court. The judges, who had provoked his ire by ruling against pandemic policies, made way for new appointees selected by the leader.

The move echoed Viktor Orbán’s remodeling of Hungary’s court system several years back; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges recently; and efforts at similar moves in the Middle Eastern state and the European country.

Weakening Judicial Independence

Analysts say that the threats and verbal assaults in the US can be viewed as efforts to weaken judicial independence in a system that offers no easy way for the executive to dismiss judges Trump disapproves of.

Meghan Leonard, an associate professor at the university who has researched authoritarian backsliding in free nations, said the White House had learned from the examples set by strongmen overseas.

“The government is looking around at these achievements and setbacks. They know they’re not going to be able to enact any legislation that would undermine the judiciary,” she said.

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

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

The professor said: “Judges' sole safeguard is people’s belief in the authority of their capacity to make those decisions. Personal intimidation on top of eroding institutional legitimacy may make judges think twice about judgments that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, highly concerning for court oversight and for democracy.”

Coercion Methods

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

She pointed to a wave of termed “harassment deliveries” this year, in which judges have received unsolicited food orders with the customer listed as Daniel Anderl, the child of Judge Esther Salas, who was killed at the judge’s home in 2020 by a assailant targeting Salas.

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

“US justices are guarded by the presidential protection and the Marshals Service. And those are both specialized police units that are placed institutionally inside the federal agency. And the former AG has been spearheading the attacks on justices.”

Government Goals

On the administration’s objectives, the expert said that “impeaching a US justice is almost certainly not going to happen because it’s so hard to do. {Right now|Currently