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The US President is not typically known for guidance, especially from international figures who often attempt to praise and compliment the US president.

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

The call for the president to move against the American court system also received support from Trump allies, including an social media message by one-time close Trump ally the billionaire, who has previously amplified Bukele's demands to impeach US judges.

Unprecedented Risks to Court Autonomy

Analysts say that the leader's latest intervention come at a time of unprecedented dangers to court autonomy and specific justices in the United States, and during a phase where the president's team is using comparable authoritarian methods used by leaders in nations such as Türkiye, Hungary, the Asian nation, and Bukele's own the Central American country to weaken democratic accountability.

The president's social media call recently was one more in a long series of taunts and claims he has leveled against the US's legal system, such as a March claim that the US was “experiencing a judicial coup,” and his mockery of a federal judge's order to stop removal operations sending accused illegal immigrants to his country's brutal correctional facilities.

Attacks on Federal Judge

Bukele's impeachment call was also issued amid social media criticism on Oregon justice Judge Immergut by White House aide Miller, attorney general Pam Bondi, Elon Musk, and the president himself in a latest press gaggle.

The judge had issued injunctions preventing the administration from deploying the national guard, initially in the state then in California. Trump has been pushing to send soldiers into the city, which the leader has characterized as “battle-scarred” based on limited, peaceful protests outside the urban homeland security facility.

History of Targeting Judges

The advisor, Bondi, and the entrepreneur have a long record of attacking judges who have blocked Trump's executive orders or in other ways hindered the administration's policy goals. Prior to resuming office recently, Trump urged his supporters against judges presiding over his legal cases, who were then inundated with threats and harassment.

Watchdog organizations, police departments, and judges themselves have highlighted a increased climate of risks and coercion in the period since he re-entered the White House.

Increasing Risk Data

Based on data gathered by the federal agency, in the current year through the end of September, there were over five hundred incidents to nearly four hundred federal judges, giving rise to more than eight hundred investigations. This year has already eclipsed 2022, and 2024, and is on track to top the previous year's high of over six hundred threats.

The dangers are not just happening at the national level. Data from the university's research project shows that there have been at least fifty-nine cases of threats, targeting, surveillance, or violence committed against judges on the state and municipal levels in 2025.

Expert Analysis on Root Causes

Specialists say that the threats are a result of the language coming from senior administration figures.

In May, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a detailed report alleging that “malicious and reckless statements from Trump administration members and allies align with rising violent posts on online platforms.” It noted “a 54% rise in demands for impeachment and physical intimidation against judges across digital networks from the first two months of this year, the first full month of the president's term.”

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.”

International Authoritarian Playbook

This progression towards autocracy has been well-trodden in the past decade in several countries, including by the Salvadoran.

In several years ago, immediately after starting a new term in the face of legal bans, Bukele’s allies in congress voted to remove the nation's top prosecutor and five justices on the supreme court. The justices, who had angered him by ruling against pandemic policies, made way for new appointees hand picked by the leader.

The move echoed the Hungarian leader's remodeling of Hungary’s court system several years back; the Turkish president's judicial purges recently; and efforts at similar moves in the Middle Eastern state and the European country.

Undermining Court Autonomy

Analysts say that the intimidation and verbal assaults in the US can be seen as efforts to weaken court autonomy in a structure that provides no simple method for the executive to remove judges Trump disapproves of.

Leonard, an academic at the university who has studied democratic decline in free nations, said the White House had taken cues from the examples set by strongmen abroad.

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

Pointing to examples such as the advisor's relentless assertions of nearly limitless presidential authority, she noted: “They directly attack the courts by repeating repeatedly that it is not a co-equal branch in the government structure.

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

The professor said: “Judges' sole safeguard is public trust in the authority of their ability to make those decisions. Personal intimidation on top of weakening trust in courts may make judges hesitate about decisions that go against the current administration, which is, of course, massively problematic for judicial review and for the political system.”

Intimidation Tactics

Kim Lane Scheppele, professor of sociology and international affairs at Princeton University, has documented the use of “autocratic legalism” by the such as the Hungarian and Putin, and has spoken out about rising threats to judges in the US.

She pointed to a series of termed “pizza doxxings” 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 2020 by a gunman aiming at Salas.

“All understands what it means. ‘Your address is known. You are a target,’” the professor said.

“US justices are guarded by the Secret Service and the federal police. And those are both specialized law enforcement that sit institutionally inside the Department of Justice. And the former AG has been leading the criticism on federal judges.”

Government Goals

On the government's aims, Scheppele said that “removing a US justice is almost certainly not going to happen because it’s so hard to do. {Right now|Currently