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Donald Trump is not typically known for advice, especially from foreign leaders who often seek to praise and compliment the American leader.

However, the Central American nation's strongman president Nayib Bukele has adopted a distinct approach by urging the White House to follow his example in impeaching so-called “dishonest judges.”

The call for the president to take action against the US judiciary also garnered backing from Trump allies, including an social media message by one-time supporter Elon Musk, who has previously amplified Bukele's demands to impeach US judges.

Unprecedented Risks to Court Autonomy

Experts say that Bukele's recent remarks occur of unmatched dangers to judicial independence and individual judges in the United States, and during a period where the Trump administration is using comparable authoritarian methods employed by rulers in countries such as Türkiye, Hungary, the Asian nation, and Bukele's own the Central American country to undermine democratic accountability.

Bukele's online call last week was just the latest in a long series of taunts and claims he has leveled against the American judiciary, including a spring claim that the US was “experiencing a court takeover,” and his mockery of a court's ruling to halt deportation flights transporting suspected undocumented individuals to his nation's harsh correctional facilities.

Attacks on Federal Judge

Bukele's impeachment call was also issued during social media criticism on the state's federal judge Judge Immergut by White House aide Miller, attorney general Pam Bondi, Elon Musk, and Trump personally in a latest press gaggle.

The judge had ordered injunctions preventing Trump from mobilizing the national guard, initially in the state then in California. Trump has been pushing to dispatch soldiers into Portland, which the president has characterized as “war-ravaged” based on limited, peaceful protests outside the city's federal building.

Record of Attacking Justices

Miller, the former AG, and Musk have a history of criticizing judges who have blocked Trump's executive orders or otherwise hindered the administration's political agenda. Prior to returning to power recently, Trump directed his followers against judges overseeing his legal cases, who were then deluged with intimidation and abuse.

Watchdog organizations, law enforcement agencies, and judges themselves have highlighted a increased climate of risks and coercion in the months since he re-entered the presidency.

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 395 US justices, leading to 805 inquiries. This year has already eclipsed the first recorded year, and 2024, and is likely to exceed 2023's high of over six hundred threats.

The dangers are not only happening at the federal level. Information by Princeton's Bridging Divides Initiative indicates that there have been at least 59 cases of intimidation, targeting, stalking, or physical attacks committed against judges on the state and municipal levels in 2025.

Expert Insights on Root Causes

Specialists say that the threats are a product of the rhetoric coming from senior administration figures.

In spring, the watchdog group published a detailed report claiming that “harmful and highly irresponsible statements from Trump administration members and supporters align with rising violent posts on online platforms.” It noted “a fifty-four percent rise in demands for removal and violent threats against judges across social media platforms from the first two months of this year, the first full month of the president's term.”

Heidi Beirich, the founder of GPAHE, said: “Trump’s threats against judges have certainly driven digital abuse at judges and calls for impeachment. Attacking the courts is another move in the administration's march towards strongman rule.”

International Strongman Playbook

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

In several years ago, immediately after commencing a new term despite constitutional prohibitions, the president's allies in congress voted to dismiss the nation's top prosecutor and five justices on the supreme court. The justices, who had provoked his ire by rejecting coronavirus measures, were replaced by replacements selected by Bukele.

The move echoed the Hungarian leader's remodeling of Hungary’s court system in 2018; the Turkish president's judicial purges recently; and attempts at comparable actions in Israel and Poland.

Undermining Court Autonomy

Analysts explain that the intimidation and rhetorical attacks in the US can be viewed as efforts to undermine judicial independence in a structure that provides no simple method for the president to dismiss judges the administration disapproves of.

Leonard, an academic at the university who has researched authoritarian backsliding in free nations, said the White House had taken cues from the models set by authoritarians abroad.

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

Pointing to examples such as Miller’s persistent assertions of broad presidential authority, she noted: “They openly attack the courts by repeating over and over that it is not a co-equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They persist in reframe the discussion by repeating their claim that the president has greater authority than this other co-equal branch, which is not how separation powers work.”

The professor said: “Justices' only protection is people’s belief in the authority of their ability to make those rulings. Individual threats on top of weakening trust in courts may make judges hesitate about judgments that go against the current administration, which is, of course, massively problematic for judicial review and for the political system.”

Intimidation Tactics

Scheppele, professor of social science and international affairs at the Ivy League school, has documented the use of “authoritarian law” by the such as the Hungarian and Putin, and has spoken out about rising dangers to judges in the US.

She pointed to a wave of termed “pizza doxxings” recently, in which judges have received unwanted food orders with the recipient listed as a name, the child of Justice Salas, who was killed at the judge’s home in 2020 by a assailant targeting Salas.

“Everyone understands what it means. ‘We know where you live. We’re coming for you,’” the professor said.

“Federal judges are guarded by the Secret Service and the federal police. And these are specialized law enforcement that are placed institutionally inside the federal agency. And the former AG has been leading the attacks on justices.”

Government Goals

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