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Donald Trump rarely accepts counsel, particularly from foreign leaders who frequently attempt to praise and admire the US president.

However, the Central American nation's strongman president Nayib Bukele has adopted a different approach by calling on the Trump administration to emulate his actions in impeaching so-called “dishonest judges.”

His appeal for Trump to take action against the American court system also garnered backing from Maga figures, including an X post by former supporter the billionaire, who has in the past boosted Bukele's demands to impeach US judges.

Growing Risks to Court Autonomy

Analysts say that Bukele's recent intervention occur of unprecedented threats to court autonomy and individual judges in the United States, and during a phase where the Trump administration is employing comparable strong-arm tactics employed by rulers in countries such as Turkey, Hungary, the Asian nation, and his native the Central American country to undermine democratic accountability.

Bukele's online statement last week was just the latest in a long series of taunts and claims he has leveled against the American judiciary, including a March assertion that the US was “facing a court takeover,” and ridicule of a federal judge's order to halt deportation flights transporting suspected undocumented individuals to his nation's brutal prison system.

Attacks on Federal Judge

Bukele's demand for removal was also made during online attacks on Oregon justice Judge Immergut by White House aide Stephen Miller, attorney general Pam Bondi, Musk, and the president himself in a recent media briefing.

The judge had ordered injunctions blocking the administration from deploying the national guard, first in the state then in California. The president has been pushing to send soldiers into the city, which the leader has characterized as “battle-scarred” based on limited, non-violent protests outside the city's homeland security facility.

Record of Targeting Justices

The advisor, Bondi, and Musk have a history of attacking judges who have blocked presidential directives or otherwise impeded the administration's political agenda. Before returning to power this year, Trump directed his supporters against judges presiding over his legal cases, who were then deluged with threats and harassment.

Monitoring groups, law enforcement agencies, and judges themselves have pointed to a heightened atmosphere of risks and coercion in the months since he returned to the presidency.

Rising Risk Data

Based on information collected by the federal agency, in 2025 through the end of September, there were 562 incidents to 395 US justices, giving rise to more than eight hundred inquiries. This year has already eclipsed the first recorded year, and last year, and is on track to top 2023's record of over six hundred reported incidents.

The dangers are not only happening at the national level. Data from Princeton's research project shows that there have been at least fifty-nine instances of threats, targeting, surveillance, or violence directed against judges on the local level in the current year.

Expert Insights on Threat Sources

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

In May, the watchdog group published a comprehensive report claiming that “malicious and reckless statements from Trump administration members and supporters coincide with rising aggressive posts on social media.” It recorded “a 54% rise in calls for impeachment and physical intimidation against judges across digital networks from January to February of this year, the initial period of the president's term.”

Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of GPAHE, said: “Trump’s threats against judges have definitely driven digital abuse at judges and demands for impeachment. Targeting the courts is another move in Trump’s advance towards strongman rule.”

Global Strongman Playbook

That march towards authoritarianism has been well-trodden in recent years in multiple nations, including by the Salvadoran.

In several years ago, right after commencing a new term despite legal bans, the president's parliamentary loyalists voted to remove the country’s top prosecutor and several justices on the supreme court. The judges, who had provoked his ire by ruling against pandemic policies, made way for replacements selected by the leader.

The action echoed Viktor Orbán’s overhaul of Hungary’s court system in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges recently; and attempts at similar moves in the Middle Eastern state and Poland.

Weakening Judicial Independence

Experts explain that the threats and rhetorical attacks in the US can be viewed as efforts to weaken judicial independence in a system that provides no simple method for the president to dismiss judges the administration disapproves of.

Meghan Leonard, an academic at the university who has studied democratic decline in democracies, said the White House had learned from the examples set by strongmen overseas.

“The administration is observing at these achievements and setbacks. They know they’re not going to be able to pass any legislation that would undermine the courts,” she said.

Citing examples such as the advisor's persistent assertions of broad presidential authority, she added: “They directly attack the courts by repeating repeatedly that it is not a equal branch in the government structure.

“They continue to reframe the discussion by emphasizing their claim that the executive has greater authority than this judicial branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

The professor said: “Judges' sole safeguard is public trust in the legitimacy of their capacity to make those rulings. Personal intimidation on top of weakening trust in courts 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

Scheppele, professor of social science and global studies at the Ivy League school, has documented the use of “authoritarian law” by the such as Orbán and the Russian, and has warned about rising threats to judges in the US.

She pointed to a wave of termed “harassment deliveries” recently, in which judges have received unsolicited pizza deliveries with the recipient listed as a name, the son of Justice Salas, who was killed at the judge’s home in several years ago by a assailant targeting the judge.

“All understands what it means. ‘We know where you live. You are a target,’” the professor said.

“Federal judges are protected by the Secret Service and the Marshals Service. And these are specialized police units that sit structurally inside the Department of Justice. And the former AG has been spearheading the attacks on federal judges.”

Administration Aims

Regarding the government's objectives, Scheppele said that “impeaching a federal judge is highly not going to happen because it’s so hard to do. {Right now|Currently