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Donald Trump rarely accepts guidance, particularly from foreign leaders who often attempt to flatter and admire the US president.

However, the Central American nation's strongman president Nayib Bukele has followed a distinct strategy by calling on the Trump administration to follow his example in removing what he terms “dishonest judges.”

His appeal for Trump to take action against the American court system also garnered support from Maga figures, such as an X post by former supporter Elon Musk, who has previously boosted Bukele's calls to oust US judges.

Unprecedented Risks to Court Autonomy

Experts say that Bukele's recent remarks occur of unmatched threats to court autonomy and specific justices in the United States, and during a phase where the president's team is employing comparable authoritarian methods used by rulers in countries such as Turkey, Hungary, India, and his native the Central American country to weaken government oversight.

Bukele's online statement last week was just the latest in a long series of taunts and claims he has leveled against the American judiciary, such as a spring assertion that the US was “experiencing a judicial coup,” and ridicule of a federal judge's order to stop removal operations transporting accused illegal immigrants to his nation's harsh prison system.

Criticism on Federal Judge

Bukele's impeachment call was also made amid online attacks on the state's federal judge Judge Immergut by White House aide Stephen Miller, former AG Pam Bondi, Musk, and Trump personally in a recent press gaggle.

Immergut had issued restraining orders preventing the administration from deploying the military reserves, initially in the state then in the West Coast state. The president has been pushing to send troops into the city, which the leader has described as “battle-scarred” based on small, non-violent protests outside the urban homeland security facility.

Record of Attacking Justices

The advisor, the former AG, and Musk have a history of criticizing judges who have ruled against Trump's executive orders or otherwise hindered the administration's policy goals. Before resuming office this year, the president urged his followers against judges overseeing his legal cases, who were then inundated with threats and abuse.

Monitoring groups, police departments, and the justices have highlighted a heightened atmosphere of risks and coercion in the period since he returned to the presidency.

Increasing Threat Statistics

Based on data gathered by the federal agency, in the current year through the end of September, there were over five hundred threats to 395 federal judges, leading to more than eight hundred investigations. 2025 has already eclipsed the first recorded year, and last year, and is likely to top 2023's high of over six hundred reported incidents.

The dangers are not only happening at the national level. Information by Princeton's Bridging Divides Initiative shows that there have been at least fifty-nine cases of intimidation, harassment, surveillance, or violence directed against judges on the state and municipal levels in the current year.

Expert Analysis on Root Causes

Specialists say that the threats are a result of the rhetoric coming from top government officials.

In spring, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a detailed report claiming that “malicious and reckless statements from White House allies and allies align with escalating violent posts on social media.” It recorded “a 54% rise in calls for impeachment and violent threats against judges across social media platforms from the first two months of this year, the first full month of Trump’s administration.”

Beirich, the co-founder of GPAHE, said: “Trump’s threats against judges have certainly driven digital abuse at judges and demands for ouster. Attacking the courts is another move in Trump’s march towards strongman rule.”

International Strongman Tactics

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

In several years ago, right after commencing a new term in the face of legal bans, the president's parliamentary loyalists voted to remove the nation's attorney general and several judges on the supreme court. The justices, who had angered him by rejecting pandemic policies, made way for replacements hand picked by Bukele.

The move echoed Viktor Orbán’s remodeling of the nation's judiciary in 2018; the Turkish president's judicial purges in 2019; and attempts at comparable actions in Israel and Poland.

Weakening Judicial Independence

Experts explain that the threats and verbal assaults in the US can be seen as efforts to weaken judicial independence in a system that offers no easy way for the executive to dismiss judges Trump disapproves of.

Meghan Leonard, an associate professor at Illinois State University who has studied authoritarian backsliding in democracies, said the White House had learned from the examples 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 legislation that would undermine the courts,” she said.

Citing examples such as Miller’s relentless claims of nearly limitless executive power, she added: “They openly criticize the courts by repeating repeatedly that it is not a equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They continue to reframe the discussion by emphasizing their claim that the executive has greater authority than this judicial branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

The professor said: “Judges' sole safeguard is people’s belief in the authority of their capacity to make those decisions. Personal intimidation on top of eroding trust in courts may make judges think twice about decisions that go against the current administration, which is, of course, massively problematic for court oversight and for democracy.”

Coercion Methods

Kim Lane Scheppele, professor of sociology and global studies at the Ivy League school, has documented the use of “autocratic legalism” by the likes of the Hungarian and Putin, and has spoken out about escalating threats to judges in the US.

She highlighted a series of termed “harassment deliveries” recently, in which judges have received unwanted food orders with the customer listed as Daniel Anderl, the son of Justice Salas, who was killed at the judge’s home in 2020 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 guarded by the Secret Service and the Marshals Service. And those are both dedicated law enforcement that sit institutionally inside the federal agency. And the former AG has been spearheading the attacks on justices.”

Government Goals

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