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President Trump responded after Iran made a new set of demands before it will stop attacking commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz. NBC News’ Keir Simmons reports.Aug. 10, 2026
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President Donald Trump announced on Sunday that staff secretary and Princeton alumnus Will Scharf ’08 will be his new White House counsel beginning Sept. 1.
Scharf will replace David Warrington as White House counsel, the top legal adviser for the White House.
“I know Will well!” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post announcing the appointment, noting Scharf’s previous roles on his legal teams. “Will is Tough, Strong, and Smart!”
Scharf has represented Trump in multiple cases, most notably in the 2024 landmark Supreme Court case that ruled that presidents have broad immunity from prosecutions for official actions taken in office.
He also currently serves as the chair of the National Capital Planning Commission, where he helped win approval for Trump’s $400 million effort to build a ballroom at the location of the former White House East Wing. The commission has seen increased scrutiny as Trump pushes for an unprecedented degree of construction and renovation in the nation’s capital.
The White House counsel advises the president on legal and policy matters. Their office oversees federal judicial appointments and handles presidential pardons, alongside serving as the point of contact for when the president is sued in his official capacity.
At Princeton, Scharf majored in history and was the president of Charter Club and the Interclub Council. He was charged in February 2008 by the Princeton Borough Police for serving alcohol to minors and maintaining a nuisance in his senior year.
The charges stemmed from a December 2007 incident at Charter where one student poured beer down another student’s back, leading to a physical altercation. The charges were later dismissed by the municipal court after one of the prosecution’s key witnesses denied being served alcohol, and Scharf’s lawyer wrote at the time that Scharf would sue the borough for “false arrest, malicious prosecution, and federal civil rights claims.”
He ultimately did not sue, but told The Daily Princetonian in 2008 that the charges “had a tremendous effect on my emotional and psychological state, especially as I’m trying to finish my thesis.”
Beginning in November 2007, Scharf was also a member of a University coalition addressing high-risk drinking on campus.
Scharf unsuccessfully ran for Undergraduate Student Government (USG) president in 2005. In the election, he was the only sophomore in a field of six other juniors and positioned himself as an outsider candidate.
“I represent the average angry student on campus, the student who is not happy with the way things are on campus, the student who thinks the USG is not representing him or her, the student who thinks the administration is doing a horrible job,” Scharf told the ‘Prince’ at the time.
The following year, Scharf planned to run for USG vice president but decided against doing so after being elected Charter Club president.
Scharf was active in conservative circles on campus, writing for The Princeton Tory and serving as the press secretary for the College Republicans. In a 2006 column for The Tory, he called for “politically blind hiring” of faculty and “an apolitical classroom environment.”
Scharf was also involved in a number of Jewish groups and served as the president of the Chabad Student Board. Scharf’s parents, Fiona and Michael Scharf ’64, were the founding benefactors of the Center for Jewish Life (CJL) and provided donations for the purchase of 15 Edwards Pl., the location of the Scharf Family Chabad House.
After graduating from Princeton, Scharf attended Harvard Law School. He worked in private practice before working as former Missouri Governor Eric Greitens’ policy director and serving as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Missouri. In 2024, Scharf unsuccessfully ran for Missouri attorney general.
Scharf did not immediately respond to phone calls and emails for comment.
Sena Chang is the associate News editor for the ‘Prince’ leading investigations. She is from Japan and South Korea, and she often covers local politics and student life. She can be reached at sena[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
Oliver Wu is the assistant News editor for the ‘Prince’ leading town coverage, focused on the Municipality of Princeton and beyond. He is from Stony Brook, N.Y., and can be reached at oliver.wu[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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Haunted by Hoover, Trump searches for an endgame in Iran
President Trump is confronting a question that has haunted presidents throughout history: how a war — one that has gone on longer than predicted — can reshape a presidency.
Behind the scenes and in public remarks, Trump has acknowledged seeking an agreement to end the Iran war in hopes of escaping comparisons to former President Herbert Hoover, the Republican whose name became synonymous with economic collapse after the Great Depression.
"I've studied presidents, some good, some bad, some great," he said at the June G7 summit in France. "Not too many are great and some really bad. We had one just recently. The one president I did not want to be was the late, great Herbert Hoover. I didn't want that and who knows what would have happened. But bad things happen."
Those remarks were more than an offhand remark. They reveal his sensibilities of what it means to be a good president and how he hopes to be remembered by history. It's recognition that he may be judged not only by what happens on the battlefield, but by the impacts on inflation, gas prices and voters' lives at home.
Historic parallels
Trump, born in 1946, grew up during a time when Hoover served as a cautionary example of what not to do during difficult economic times.
Hoover stuck to his Republican principles that the government shouldn't meddle in the economy — a decision many saw as one of the worst political mistakes of the 20th century.
"Trump often reveals what he's thinking with these comments he makes," said Tevi Troy, a presidential historian and former White House aide to George W. Bush. "They sound like asides, but I think they're indicative of his upbringing. He grew up in a period where Herbert Hoover was a very negative thing to be."
Trump is not the only Republican to face those fears.
During the financial crisis of 2008, President George W. Bush raised his own concerns in an Oval Office meeting congressional leaders urging them to approve his plan to stabilize the financial markets. Bush argued that it was better to take action — or risk being compared to Herbert Hoover.
"We're going to act. I'm not going to be Herbert Hoover," Bush told the leaders, presidential historian Russell Riley wrote in his book Inside the George W. Bush White House: An Oral History.
Ronald Reagan also faced Hoover comparisons during the recession of 1981 and 1982, but escaped the association when the economy rebounded.
"Any Republican president who gets hit with bad economic times faces the danger of being tagged as Herbert Hoover," Troy said. "You don't really hear people saying Jimmy Carter was Herbert Hoover. It's constantly something that happens to Republican presidents."
Urgent concerns
For Trump, that concern is more urgent as the war takes its toll on energy and inflation.
The risks of recession are higher today than they were prior to the war, but they're also not off the charts, according to Diane Swonk, chief economist at the accounting firm KPMG. But she said the risks get higher the longer that inflation persists and the Fed leaves it unaddressed, noting that inflation has persisted for five years.
Still, she cautioned against treating today's economy as a replay of Hoover's experience — noting the economy was much different then and there are much better tools today to prevent such a catastrophe.
"It's hard to get back to a Hoover-type situation where there are all these Hoovervilles," she said. "There were so many policy mistakes made back then that caused that situation and how it played out."
But the president has long understood that his political success may be defined by the performance of the economy – and he knows that a prolonged war can often reshape a presidency in unexpected ways.
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Trump’s new A-G a champion of unbridled presidential power
Washington: The three lame-duck Republican senators who narrowly saved Todd Blanche’s confirmation as US attorney-general ended up backing him because they believed he was the only person who had earned enough trust, and enjoyed enough access, to rein in President Donald Trump.
One issue with that calculation: Blanche is a champion of unbridled presidential power.
Time and again during his turbulent nomination process, Blanche made it unmistakably clear that he believes Trump possesses a nearly limitless right to directly control the actions of the Justice Department under Article II of the Constitution. It is an argument that formed the foundation of his strategy as the president’s criminal defence lawyer and is the lodestar of his government service.
Blanche’s confirmation in the predawn hours of Saturday (Washington time) was largely symbolic: as acting attorney general, he could have served indefinitely. But it represented a powerful endorsement by Congress of the philosophy that has guided him under a meddling, demanding boss – that he has a constitutional obligation to execute every lawful White House order, even if it shatters long-standing policy and rule-of-law norms, or contradicts what he thinks is right.
He articulated that view from the moment he took over as acting attorney-general in April, telling reporters that Trump had “the right” and “duty” to order up investigations of people he targets. During his confirmation, both in public and in private conversations, Blanche sidestepped questions over whether actions Trump ordered were right, saying only that Trump had the right to do them.
Barbara McQuade, a University of Michigan Law School professor and former federal prosecutor, said this marked a major break from past administrations. “Just because a president can control the Justice Department does not mean he should,” she said. “Since Watergate, America has prized a Justice Department that is independent from partisan politics.”
While Trump and allies such as Blanche have repeatedly accused the Biden White House of ordering up prosecutorial hit jobs against Republicans, they have provided little evidence to support the kind of direct interventions that have become commonplace in Trump’s second term.
In a recent interview, former president Barack Obama said he followed a broad rule of remaining at a distance from the Justice Department to protect its independence, even though he was not legally required to do so.
“The White House shouldn’t be able to direct the attorney-general to go around prosecuting whoever the president wants to prosecute,” he said. “The idea is that the attorney-general is the people’s lawyer. It’s not the president’s consiglieri.”
Trump has a different view. Case in point: late on Monday, he browbeat US Attorney Jeanine Pirro for withdrawing the indictment of a man accused of defacing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. While the melodramatic showdown was big news, the fact that the president was issuing marching orders to a federal prosecutor was so typical under this administration that it was not noted in most of the coverage.
During Blanche’s confirmation hearing, Democratic senator Chris Coons asked whether the department he was running is “independent from the White House?”
Blanche’s reply: “Article II of the Constitution gives the power of the executive to President Trump.”
When Coons followed up by asking if he would resign if Trump directed him to do something illegal or unethical, Blanche said: “That will never happen. But yes, if it were to happen, I’m not going to violate my oath to the Constitution.”
While many Republicans raised questions about Blanche’s actions and even his independence during his confirmation, few were willing to withhold, or even leverage, their votes to challenge the boss-employee dynamic Trump has imposed on the department.
“Ultimately, decisions are made by the president,” said Republican senator Bill Cassidy, who announced in a floor speech on Friday that he would deliver the decisive vote for Blanche’s confirmation.
The adviser Cassidy consulted before making up his mind was notable. During his speech, he quoted extensively from conversations with William Barr, Trump’s attorney-general in his first term who articulated an expansive view of presidential power in a 2018 memo. Barr quit two years later when pressured by Trump to help undermine confidence in the 2020 election.
Barr counselled Cassidy to support Blanche in the belief that he could quietly talk the president out of bad ideas, even though Barr quit rather than comply with Trump’s demands to investigate an election Barr found had been fairly conducted.
Blanche’s experience as Trump’s private lawyer was not a reason to oppose him, Barr told Cassidy – but an asset. It gave Blanche the capacity to “have tough conversations” and confront Trump with “difficult truths” that could change his mind, Barr said to him.
Not every Republican bought in to this job description of an attorney-general.
Two Republican women, senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowksi of Alaska, said they would vote no on Blanche precisely because he had been unwilling to speak truth to Trump’s power or have enough tough conversations with him.
Collins, the first Republican to oppose Blanche, said he had taken several actions “that have further eroded the department’s independence”, including his sign-off on tax protections for the president and his family and the attempted indictments of Democratic lawmakers who criticised Trump.
Early on Friday, Murkowski, a consistent and plainspoken Republican critic of Trump, described her no vote as a moment of major historic consequence – an opportunity to both demonstrate the chamber’s dissatisfaction with Blanche’s obeisance and reclaim the Senate’s authority to influence the department’s direction.
“The country needs an attorney-general who will check the worst impulses of this administration,” Murkowski said on Friday. “I hope Mr Blanche is able to achieve that, if confirmed, but I simply do not have confidence that will be the case.”
Shortly after, Cassidy took to the floor to offer Blanche his support.
The floor fight over Blanche was preceded by a clash in the Senate Judiciary Committee that followed a similar trajectory.
Two lame-duck senators, Republicans John Cornyn and Thom Tillis, briefly withheld their support on the Senate judiciary committee over Blanche’s role in a deal to resolve Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS. The ensuing agreement created a $US1.8 billion ($2.5 billion) fund to compensate purported victims of Biden-era abuses at the department and granted Trump sweeping immunity from tax investigations.
Both made it clear, from the start, that they liked Blanche and did not consider his reluctance to challenge Trump to be disqualifying.
They simply wanted him to put in writing his verbal commitment to kill the fund and to include modest limits on the tax provision. Blanche was amenable, but the White House resisted, and Trump threatened to temporarily withdraw Blanche’s nomination until the two lawmakers were out of office.
The president eventually relented, clearing the way for a vote on the floor. But the episode underscored, in the view of critics, the lopsided power dynamic inherent in the partnership between Trump and Blanche.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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