🔗 Share this article

Donald Trump rarely accepts guidance, especially from international figures who often seek to praise and admire the US president.

However, the Central American nation's authoritarian leader Nayib Bukele has adopted a different strategy by urging the Trump administration to emulate his actions in impeaching so-called “dishonest judges.”

His appeal for the president to take action against the US judiciary also garnered support from Maga figures, such as an social media message by one-time close Trump ally Elon Musk, who has previously boosted Bukele's calls to impeach US judges.

Growing Threats to Court Autonomy

Analysts say that the leader's recent intervention come at a time of unprecedented dangers to judicial independence and specific justices in the US, and during a period where the Trump administration is employing similar authoritarian tactics used by rulers in nations such as Türkiye, Hungary, the Asian nation, and his native the Central American country to weaken government oversight.

The president's social media statement last week was just the latest in a string of taunts and claims he has leveled against the US's legal system, such as a March claim that the US was “facing a court takeover,” and his mockery of a federal judge's order to stop removal operations transporting accused illegal immigrants to his nation's harsh prison system.

Attacks on Federal Judge

Bukele's demand for removal was also made amid social media criticism on Oregon justice Judge Immergut by White House aide Stephen Miller, former AG Bondi, Musk, and Trump personally in a recent press gaggle.

Immergut had issued restraining orders preventing the administration from deploying the national guard, initially in the state then in California. Trump has been eager to send troops into the city, which the leader has described as “battle-scarred” based on limited, non-violent protests outside the city's federal building.

Record of Targeting Justices

Miller, Bondi, and the entrepreneur have a history of criticizing judges who have blocked Trump's executive orders or in other ways hindered the government's policy goals. Prior to returning to power recently, the president directed his supporters against judges overseeing his civil and criminal trials, who were then inundated with intimidation and harassment.

Monitoring groups, police departments, and the justices have highlighted a increased atmosphere of threats and intimidation in the period since he re-entered the White House.

Increasing Risk Data

According to data gathered by the US Marshals Service, in 2025 through the third quarter, there were 562 incidents to nearly four hundred US justices, giving rise to more than eight hundred inquiries. 2025 has already surpassed 2022, and last year, and is on track to exceed the previous year's record of 630 threats.

The dangers are not just happening at the federal level. Information by the university's Bridging Divides Initiative shows that there have been at least fifty-nine instances of intimidation, targeting, stalking, or physical attacks directed against judges on the local level in the current year.

Expert Analysis on Root Causes

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

In spring, the watchdog group published a detailed report alleging that “malicious and reckless statements from Trump administration members and supporters align with escalating aggressive posts on social media.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent rise in demands for removal and physical intimidation against judges across social media platforms from January to February of this year, the initial period of the president's term.”

Heidi Beirich, the founder of the organization, said: “Trump’s threats against judges have certainly fueled online vitriol at judges and demands for ouster. Attacking the courts is another move in the administration's advance towards strongman rule.”

Global Strongman Playbook

This progression towards autocracy has been common in recent years in multiple countries, including by Bukele.

In 2021, right after commencing a second term despite constitutional prohibitions, Bukele’s allies in congress voted to dismiss the nation's attorney general and several judges on the supreme court. The justices, who had angered him by rejecting pandemic policies, were replaced by 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 Poland.

Weakening Judicial Independence

Experts explain that the threats and verbal assaults in the US can be viewed as attempts to undermine judicial independence in a system that provides no simple method for the president to remove judges the administration opposes.

Leonard, an academic at Illinois State University who has researched authoritarian backsliding in free nations, said the White House had learned from the examples set by strongmen overseas.

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

Citing examples such as Miller’s persistent assertions of nearly limitless executive power, she added: “They directly attack the courts by repeating repeatedly that it is not a equal branch in the government structure.

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

Leonard said: “Judges' only protection is public trust in the legitimacy of their ability to make those decisions. Individual threats on top of eroding trust in courts may make judges hesitate about judgments that go against the current administration, which is, of course, highly concerning for court oversight and for the political system.”

Coercion Methods

Scheppele, academic of sociology and international affairs at the Ivy League school, has written about the use of “authoritarian law” by the likes of the Hungarian and the Russian, and has spoken out about rising dangers to judges in the US.

She pointed to a wave of termed “pizza doxxings” this year, in which judges have received unsolicited food orders with the recipient listed as a name, the child of Justice Salas, who was murdered at the judge’s home in several years ago by a assailant aiming at Salas.

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

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

Government Goals

On the administration’s objectives, Scheppele said that “impeaching a federal judge is almost certainly not going to happen because it’s so hard to do. {Right now|Currently