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Donald Trump does not usually take advice, particularly from international figures who often seek to flatter and admire the American leader.

However, the Central American nation's strongman president Bukele has adopted a distinct strategy by urging the Trump administration to emulate his actions in impeaching so-called “corrupt judges.”

His appeal for Trump to take action against the US judiciary also received backing from Trump allies, including an social media message by one-time close Trump ally the billionaire, who has previously amplified Bukele's demands to oust US judges.

Growing Risks to Court Autonomy

Experts say that the leader's recent intervention come at a time of unmatched threats to court autonomy and individual judges in the United States, and during a phase where the president's team is using comparable authoritarian methods employed by rulers in nations such as Turkey, the European state, the Asian nation, and his native El Salvador to undermine government oversight.

The president's online statement last week was one more in a long series of provocations and allegations he has leveled against the American judiciary, including a spring assertion that the US was “facing a court takeover,” and his mockery of a court's order to stop removal operations transporting suspected illegal immigrants to his country's harsh prison system.

Attacks on Federal Judge

The Salvadoran's impeachment call was also made during social media attacks on Oregon federal judge Judge Immergut by presidential advisor Stephen Miller, former AG Pam Bondi, Elon Musk, and Trump personally in a recent press gaggle.

Immergut had ordered restraining orders preventing the administration from mobilizing the military reserves, initially in Oregon then in California. Trump has been eager to send troops into the city, which the leader has characterized as “war-ravaged” based on limited, non-violent protests outside the city's homeland security facility.

Record of Targeting Judges

Miller, the former AG, and the entrepreneur have a history of attacking judges who have blocked Trump's executive orders or in other ways hindered the government's policy goals. Prior to resuming office this year, Trump urged his followers against judges presiding over his legal cases, who were then inundated with threats and abuse.

Watchdog organizations, law enforcement agencies, and judges themselves have pointed to a heightened atmosphere of risks and intimidation in the months since he returned to the presidency.

Rising Threat Statistics

Based on data collected by the US Marshals Service, in the current year through the end of September, there were 562 incidents to nearly four hundred US justices, giving rise to more than eight hundred investigations. 2025 has already eclipsed 2022, and last year, and is on track to exceed 2023's record of 630 threats.

The dangers are not only happening at the federal level. Data from the university's Bridging Divides Initiative indicates that there have been at least 59 instances of intimidation, harassment, surveillance, or physical attacks directed against judges on the state and municipal levels in 2025.

Analyst Insights on Root Causes

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

In May, 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 rising aggressive posts on social media.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent rise in calls for impeachment and violent threats 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 GPAHE, said: “Trump’s warnings against judges have certainly driven online vitriol at judges and calls for impeachment. Targeting the judiciary is another move in Trump’s advance towards authoritarianism.”

International Strongman Tactics

This progression towards authoritarianism has been common in the past decade in several nations, including by the Salvadoran.

In several years ago, immediately after starting a new term in the face of constitutional prohibitions, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to remove the nation's top prosecutor and several justices on the constitutional court. The judges, who had provoked his ire by rejecting pandemic policies, were replaced by replacements selected by Bukele.

The move mirrored Viktor Orbán’s overhaul of the nation's judiciary in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges recently; and attempts at comparable actions in Israel and the European country.

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 structure that provides no simple method for the executive to dismiss judges the administration opposes.

Meghan Leonard, an academic at the university who has researched authoritarian backsliding in free nations, said the Trump administration had taken cues from the examples set by strongmen abroad.

“The administration 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 courts,” she said.

Pointing to instances such as the advisor's persistent claims of nearly limitless presidential authority, she noted: “They openly criticize the courts by repeating repeatedly that it is not a equal branch in the government structure.

“They continue to redefine the discussion by emphasizing their claim that the president has more power than this judicial branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

Leonard said: “Judges' sole safeguard is public trust in the legitimacy of their ability to make those decisions. Individual threats on top of weakening trust in courts may make judges hesitate about judgments that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, highly concerning for court oversight and for democracy.”

Coercion Methods

Scheppele, academic of sociology and international affairs at Princeton University, has written about the use of “authoritarian law” by the such as Orbán and Putin, and has warned about rising threats to judges in the US.

She pointed to a series of termed “pizza doxxings” recently, in which judges have received unsolicited food orders with the customer listed as Daniel Anderl, the child of Justice Salas, who was killed at the residence in 2020 by a gunman aiming at Salas.

“Everyone knows what it means. ‘We know where you live. You are a target,’” Scheppele said.

“US justices are protected by the Secret Service and the Marshals Service. And those are both specialized law enforcement that are placed structurally inside the Department of Justice. And Pam Bondi has been spearheading the attacks on justices.”

Government Goals

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