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

But, the Central American nation's strongman president Nayib Bukele has followed a different approach by urging the Trump administration to emulate his actions in removing what he terms “corrupt judges.”

The call for Trump to move against the American court system also received support from Maga figures, including an X post by former supporter Elon Musk, who has previously boosted Bukele's calls to impeach US judges.

Growing Risks to Judicial Independence

Experts say that the leader's latest remarks occur of unprecedented dangers to court autonomy and individual judges in the US, and during a phase where the president's team is using similar strong-arm tactics employed by rulers in nations such as Turkey, the European state, India, and Bukele's own the Central American country to weaken government oversight.

Bukele's online statement last week was one more in a string of taunts and allegations he has made against the US's legal system, such as a March claim that the US was “experiencing a court takeover,” and his mockery of a federal judge's ruling to stop deportation flights sending suspected undocumented individuals to his nation's harsh correctional facilities.

Attacks on Federal Judge

Bukele's impeachment call was also made amid online criticism on Oregon justice Karin Immergut by presidential advisor Stephen Miller, attorney general Pam Bondi, Musk, and Trump personally in a recent media briefing.

Immergut had ordered injunctions blocking Trump from mobilizing the national guard, first in the state then in California. Trump has been eager to dispatch soldiers into the city, which the president has characterized as “war-ravaged” based on limited, non-violent demonstrations outside the urban federal building.

History of Attacking Judges

Miller, Bondi, and Musk have a long record of criticizing judges who have blocked presidential directives or in other ways hindered the government's policy goals. Before resuming office this year, the president directed his followers against judges overseeing his legal cases, who were then inundated with intimidation and harassment.

Watchdog organizations, law enforcement agencies, and judges themselves have pointed to a heightened atmosphere of threats and intimidation in the period since he returned to the White House.

Rising Risk Data

According to information collected by the US Marshals Service, in 2025 through the third quarter, there were over five hundred threats to nearly four hundred federal judges, giving rise to 805 investigations. This year has already surpassed 2022, and last year, and is likely to top the previous year's high of 630 threats.

The threats are not just happening at the federal level. Data from the university's Bridging Divides Initiative shows that there have been at least fifty-nine cases of intimidation, harassment, surveillance, or violence committed against judges on the local level in the current year.

Analyst Analysis on Root Causes

Experts say that the intimidation are a product of the rhetoric coming from top government officials.

In May, the watchdog group published a detailed report alleging that “harmful and highly irresponsible statements from White House allies and supporters align with escalating aggressive posts on online platforms.” It recorded “a 54% rise in calls for impeachment and physical intimidation against judges across social media platforms from the first two months of this year, the initial period of Trump’s administration.”

Heidi Beirich, the founder of GPAHE, said: “Trump’s warnings against judges have definitely driven digital abuse at judges and demands for ouster. Attacking the judiciary is another move in Trump’s advance towards strongman rule.”

Global Strongman Playbook

That march towards autocracy has been well-trodden in the past decade in multiple nations, 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 five judges on the supreme court. The justices, who had provoked his ire by ruling against pandemic policies, made way for replacements hand picked by the leader.

The move echoed the Hungarian leader's overhaul of the nation's judiciary several years back; the Turkish president's court cleanups in 2019; and attempts at similar moves in the Middle Eastern state and Poland.

Weakening Court Autonomy

Analysts explain that the intimidation and verbal assaults in the US can be viewed as attempts to undermine court autonomy in a structure that offers no easy way for the executive to dismiss judges Trump disapproves of.

Meghan Leonard, an associate professor at the university who has studied democratic decline in democracies, said the White House had taken cues from the examples set by strongmen abroad.

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

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

“They continue to reframe the debate by emphasizing their claim that the president has more power than this other co-equal branch, which is not how separation powers work.”

Leonard said: “Justices' only protection is public trust in the legitimacy of their ability to make those decisions. Personal intimidation on top of eroding trust in courts may make judges hesitate about decisions that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, highly concerning for judicial review and for democracy.”

Intimidation Tactics

Scheppele, academic of sociology and global studies at Princeton University, has written about the use of “authoritarian law” by the such as the Hungarian and Putin, and has warned about escalating threats to judges in the US.

She highlighted a series of termed “harassment deliveries” this year, in which judges have received unwanted pizza deliveries with the customer listed as a name, the child of Judge Esther Salas, who was killed at the judge’s home in several years ago by a assailant targeting the judge.

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

“Federal judges are protected by the presidential protection and the federal police. And these are dedicated law enforcement that sit structurally inside the federal agency. And Pam Bondi has been leading the attacks on justices.”

Government Goals

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