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

However, the Central American nation's authoritarian leader Nayib Bukele has followed a distinct strategy by urging the White House to emulate his actions in removing so-called “dishonest judges.”

His appeal for the president to take action against the US judiciary also garnered backing from Maga figures, such as an X post by one-time close Trump ally Elon Musk, who has in the past boosted Bukele's demands to oust US judges.

Growing Risks to Court Autonomy

Experts note that Bukele's latest intervention occur of unprecedented dangers to court autonomy and individual judges in the US, and during a period where the president's team is employing similar authoritarian methods employed by rulers in countries such as Turkey, Hungary, the Asian nation, and his native El Salvador to weaken democratic accountability.

The president's online call recently was just the latest in a long series of taunts and claims he has made against the US's legal system, including a March assertion that the US was “experiencing a court takeover,” and his mockery of a federal judge's order to stop removal operations sending suspected illegal immigrants to his nation's brutal correctional facilities.

Attacks on Oregon Justice

The Salvadoran's impeachment call was also issued amid online attacks on the state's justice Karin Immergut by presidential advisor Stephen Miller, former AG Bondi, Musk, and the president himself in a latest media briefing.

Immergut had issued restraining orders preventing Trump from deploying the national guard, initially in Oregon then in the West Coast state. Trump has been pushing to send troops into Portland, which the leader has described as “war-ravaged” based on limited, non-violent protests outside the urban homeland security facility.

History of Targeting Justices

Miller, the former AG, and Musk have a long record of attacking judges who have blocked Trump's executive orders or otherwise impeded the government's political agenda. Before returning to power this year, Trump urged his supporters against judges overseeing his legal cases, who were then inundated with intimidation and harassment.

Watchdog organizations, police departments, and the justices have pointed to a heightened climate of threats and intimidation in the months since he re-entered the White House.

Increasing Threat Statistics

Based on information gathered by the US Marshals Service, in the current year through the end of September, there were 562 threats to nearly four hundred federal judges, giving rise to more than eight hundred inquiries. This year has already surpassed 2022, and last year, and is on track to exceed 2023's record of over six hundred threats.

The threats are not just happening at the national level. Information by the university's Bridging Divides Initiative shows that there have been at least fifty-nine instances of intimidation, targeting, stalking, or violence directed against judges on the state and municipal levels in the current year.

Expert Analysis on Threat Sources

Experts state that the threats are a product of the language coming from top government officials.

In May, the watchdog group published a comprehensive report alleging that “harmful and reckless statements from Trump administration members and allies coincide with rising violent posts on online platforms.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent rise in calls for impeachment and physical intimidation against judges across social media platforms from the first two months 2025, the first full month of Trump’s administration.”

Beirich, the founder of GPAHE, said: “Trump’s threats against judges have definitely driven digital abuse at judges and demands for impeachment. Targeting the courts is one more step in the administration's advance towards strongman rule.”

Global Authoritarian Playbook

That march towards autocracy has been well-trodden in recent years in several countries, such as by Bukele.

In several years ago, right after starting a new term despite constitutional prohibitions, Bukele’s allies in congress voted to remove the country’s top prosecutor and several judges on the supreme court. The judges, who had angered him by rejecting pandemic policies, were replaced by new appointees selected by the leader.

The action echoed Viktor Orbán’s remodeling of Hungary’s court system several years back; the Turkish president's judicial purges in 2019; and attempts at similar moves in the Middle Eastern state and Poland.

Weakening Court Autonomy

Analysts say that the threats and verbal assaults in the US can be seen as attempts to undermine court autonomy in a system that provides no simple method for the executive to remove judges Trump opposes.

Meghan Leonard, an associate professor at Illinois State University who has studied democratic decline in democracies, said the Trump administration had learned from the models set by strongmen abroad.

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

Citing examples such as the advisor's relentless assertions of broad presidential authority, she noted: “They directly criticize the courts by stating repeatedly that it is not a co-equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They continue to reframe the discussion by emphasizing their claim that the executive has more power than this other co-equal branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

Leonard said: “Judges' sole safeguard is public trust in the authority of their capacity to make those decisions. Personal intimidation on top of weakening institutional legitimacy 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

Kim Lane Scheppele, professor of social science and global studies at Princeton University, has written about the use of “authoritarian law” by the likes of the Hungarian and Putin, and has warned about escalating dangers to judges in the US.

She highlighted a wave of termed “pizza doxxings” recently, in which judges have received unwanted pizza deliveries with the recipient listed as a name, the son of Justice Salas, who was killed at the residence in 2020 by a assailant aiming at Salas.

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

“Federal judges are guarded by the Secret Service and the Marshals Service. And these are specialized law enforcement that are placed institutionally inside the Department of Justice. And the former AG has been spearheading the criticism on federal judges.”

Government Goals

Regarding the government's objectives, the expert said that “removing a US justice is highly not going to happen because it’s very difficult to do. {Right now|Currently