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Donald Trump does not usually take counsel, especially from foreign leaders who often seek to flatter and admire the US president.

But, the Central American nation's strongman president Bukele has followed a different strategy by calling on the Trump administration to emulate his actions in removing so-called “dishonest judges.”

The call for the president to move against the American court system also received support from Maga figures, such as an social media message by former supporter Elon Musk, who has previously boosted Bukele's calls to impeach US judges.

Growing Threats to Court Autonomy

Analysts say that the leader's latest intervention occur of unprecedented dangers to judicial independence and individual judges in the US, and during a period where the president's team is employing similar strong-arm tactics used by rulers in countries such as Türkiye, Hungary, India, and his native the Central American country to undermine democratic accountability.

The president's social media call last week was just the latest in a string of provocations and allegations he has made against the American judiciary, including a March claim that the US was “experiencing a judicial coup,” and ridicule of a court's ruling to stop removal operations transporting accused illegal immigrants to his nation's brutal correctional facilities.

Attacks on Oregon Justice

Bukele's demand for removal was also made during social media attacks on the state's federal judge Karin Immergut by presidential advisor Miller, attorney general Pam Bondi, Musk, and Trump personally in a recent media briefing.

Immergut had issued restraining orders preventing Trump from deploying the military reserves, initially in the state then in the West Coast state. The president has been pushing to dispatch soldiers into Portland, which the leader has characterized as “war-ravaged” based on limited, non-violent demonstrations outside the city's federal building.

History of Attacking Judges

The advisor, the former AG, and Musk have a history of attacking judges who have ruled against presidential directives or in other ways hindered the administration's policy goals. Before resuming office recently, the president urged his supporters against judges presiding over his legal cases, who were then inundated with intimidation and abuse.

Monitoring groups, police departments, and the justices have highlighted a heightened climate of risks and coercion in the months since he re-entered the White House.

Rising Threat Statistics

According to information collected by the federal agency, in 2025 through the end of September, there were over five hundred threats to nearly four hundred federal judges, giving rise to more than eight hundred investigations. This year has already eclipsed 2022, and last year, and is on track to top 2023's high of over six hundred reported incidents.

The threats are not just happening at the national level. Data from Princeton's Bridging Divides Initiative indicates that there have been at least fifty-nine instances of threats, targeting, surveillance, or physical attacks directed against judges on the local level in 2025.

Expert Analysis on Root Causes

Experts state that the intimidation are a result of the rhetoric coming from senior administration figures.

In May, the watchdog group published a comprehensive report claiming that “harmful and reckless statements from White House allies and supporters align with rising violent posts on social media.” It noted “a fifty-four percent rise in demands for removal and violent threats against judges across digital networks from the first two months 2025, the initial period of Trump’s administration.”

Beirich, the founder of GPAHE, said: “The president's threats against judges have certainly driven online vitriol at judges and demands for ouster. Targeting the judiciary is another move in Trump’s advance towards strongman rule.”

Global Authoritarian Playbook

That march towards autocracy has been common in recent years in several countries, including by Bukele.

In several years ago, right after starting a new term in the face of legal bans, Bukele’s allies in congress voted to remove the country’s attorney general and five justices on the constitutional court. The judges, who had angered him by ruling against pandemic policies, made way for replacements selected by Bukele.

The move mirrored Viktor Orbán’s overhaul of the nation's judiciary in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges in 2019; and efforts at comparable actions in the Middle Eastern state and Poland.

Weakening Judicial Independence

Experts say that the threats and rhetorical attacks in the US can be seen as attempts to undermine judicial independence in a system that offers no easy way for the president to dismiss 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 learned from the models set by authoritarians abroad.

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

Pointing to instances such as Miller’s relentless assertions of broad presidential authority, she noted: “They openly attack the judiciary by stating over and over that it is not a co-equal branch in the separation of powers.

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

The professor said: “Judges' only protection is public trust in the legitimacy of their capacity to make those rulings. Individual threats on top of eroding trust in courts may make judges hesitate about judgments that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, massively problematic for judicial review and for the political system.”

Intimidation Tactics

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

She pointed to a wave of termed “harassment deliveries” recently, in which judges have received unwanted pizza deliveries with the customer listed as a name, the son of Justice Salas, who was murdered at the residence in 2020 by a gunman targeting the judge.

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

“Federal judges are protected by the presidential protection and the federal police. And those are both dedicated law enforcement that are placed structurally inside the Department of Justice. And Pam Bondi has been spearheading the attacks on justices.”

Government Goals

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