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The US President does not usually take guidance, especially from international figures who frequently attempt to flatter and admire the American leader.

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

The call for the president to take action against the US judiciary also garnered backing from Trump allies, such as an X post by former supporter Elon Musk, who has in the past boosted the Salvadoran's demands to impeach US judges.

Growing Risks to Judicial Independence

Experts say that the leader's recent intervention come at a time of unprecedented threats to court autonomy and individual judges in the US, and during a period where the Trump administration is employing comparable strong-arm tactics used by rulers in nations such as Turkey, the European state, the Asian nation, and his native the Central American country to undermine government oversight.

The president's social media statement recently was one more in a string of taunts and claims he has made against the US's legal system, such as a spring claim that the US was “facing a judicial coup,” and ridicule of a federal judge's order to halt deportation flights sending accused undocumented individuals to his country's brutal correctional facilities.

Criticism on Federal Judge

The Salvadoran's demand for removal was also made during social media criticism on Oregon federal judge Karin Immergut by presidential advisor Miller, attorney general Pam Bondi, Elon Musk, and the president personally in a recent media briefing.

The judge had issued restraining orders blocking Trump from deploying the military reserves, initially in Oregon then in California. Trump has been eager to send soldiers into Portland, which the leader has characterized as “battle-scarred” based on small, peaceful demonstrations outside the urban homeland security facility.

History of Targeting Judges

The advisor, the former AG, and Musk have a long record of criticizing judges who have ruled against presidential directives or otherwise hindered the government's policy goals. Before returning to power this year, Trump directed his followers against judges overseeing his civil and criminal trials, who were then deluged with threats and harassment.

Monitoring groups, law enforcement agencies, and the justices have highlighted a heightened atmosphere of threats and intimidation in the months since he returned to the presidency.

Increasing Threat Statistics

Based on data gathered by the US Marshals Service, in 2025 through the third quarter, there were over five hundred threats to 395 federal judges, leading to 805 investigations. This year has already eclipsed 2022, and last year, and is on track to exceed the previous year's record of over six hundred threats.

The threats are not only happening at the national level. Information by the university's research project indicates that there have been at least 59 cases of intimidation, targeting, stalking, or physical attacks directed against judges on the local level in 2025.

Expert Analysis on Root Causes

Experts say that the intimidation are a result of the language coming from top government officials.

In spring, the watchdog group published a detailed report alleging that “harmful and highly irresponsible statements from Trump administration members and supporters coincide with rising aggressive posts on social media.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent rise in calls for impeachment and physical intimidation against judges across digital networks from January to February 2025, the first full month of Trump’s administration.”

Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of the organization, said: “Trump’s warnings against judges have certainly fueled digital abuse at judges and demands for ouster. Targeting the judiciary is one more step in the administration's march towards strongman rule.”

Global Authoritarian Playbook

This progression towards autocracy has been common in the past decade in several countries, such as by Bukele.

In 2021, immediately after commencing a second term in the face of constitutional prohibitions, the president's parliamentary loyalists voted to remove the nation's top prosecutor and five judges on the constitutional court. The judges, who had provoked his ire by rejecting pandemic policies, were replaced by replacements hand picked by the leader.

The move echoed the Hungarian leader's remodeling of the nation's judiciary several years back; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges recently; and efforts at comparable actions in Israel and Poland.

Undermining Court Autonomy

Analysts say that the threats and rhetorical attacks in the US can be seen as attempts to weaken judicial independence in a system that provides no simple method for the executive to dismiss judges the administration opposes.

Meghan Leonard, an academic at Illinois State University who has researched democratic decline in free nations, said the Trump administration had taken cues from the models set by strongmen abroad.

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

Citing examples such as the advisor's relentless assertions of broad executive power, she added: “They openly attack the judiciary by repeating over and over that it is not a equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They continue to reframe the debate 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: “Judges' sole safeguard is public trust in the legitimacy of their ability to make those rulings. Individual threats on top of weakening institutional legitimacy may make judges hesitate about decisions that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, massively problematic for court oversight and for democracy.”

Coercion Methods

Kim Lane Scheppele, academic of sociology and global studies at Princeton University, has documented the use of “autocratic legalism” by the such as the Hungarian and the Russian, and has warned about escalating dangers to judges in the US.

She highlighted a wave of so-called “harassment deliveries” recently, in which judges have received unsolicited pizza deliveries with the customer listed as a name, the son of Justice Salas, who was murdered at the residence in 2020 by a assailant targeting the judge.

“All knows what it means. ‘We know where you live. We’re coming for you,’” Scheppele said.

“US justices are guarded by the presidential protection and the Marshals Service. And those are both dedicated law enforcement that are placed structurally inside the Department of Justice. And Pam Bondi has been spearheading the attacks on federal judges.”

Government Goals

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