WASHINGTON — Human Rights Watch on Thursday released its annual report on threats to human rights around the world, and for the first time in the 27 years it has done these surveys, the United States is one of the biggest. The reason: the rise of Donald J. Trump.

Eight days before Mr. Trump is to be sworn in as president, the human-rights advocacy group declared that his path to power, in a campaign marked by “misogynistic, xenophobic and racist rhetoric,” could “cause tremendous harm to vulnerable communities, contravene the United States’ core human rights obligations, or both.”

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But Kenneth Roth, the organization’s executive director, said in an interview: “This is a more fundamental threat to human rights than George Bush after 9/11. I see Trump treating human rights as a constraint on the will of the majority in a way that Bush never did.”

Mr. Roth cited a familiar list of policies Mr. Trump embraced during the campaign: mass deportations of unauthorized immigrants, a ban on Muslims’ entering the United States, and an openness to reintroducing techniques like waterboarding. Mr. Trump has since expressed second thoughts about torture, after a meeting with Gen. James N. Mattis, his nominee for defense secretary, who told him it was ineffective.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/12/us/politics/human-rights-watch-trump.html?smid=tw-share

The Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee on Thursday issued a stern letter, including a veiled threat of an investigation, to the federal government’s top ethics monitor, who this week had questioned President-elect Donald J. Trump’s commitment to confront his potential conflicts of interest.

In an unusual action against the independent Office of Government Ethics, Representative Jason Chaffetz of Utah accused the office’s director, Walter M. Shaub Jr., of “blurring the line between public relations and official ethics guidance.”

He cited a bizarre series of Twitter posts that the office made in late November congratulating Mr. Trump for divesting from his business — even though Mr. Trump had made no such commitment. Mr. Chaffetz also said that the office had failed to adequately investigate Hillary Clinton, based on allegations that she had not properly disclosed fees paid for speeches she gave after leaving her post as secretary of state.

Mr. Chaffetz’s letter made no mention of Mr. Shaub’s airing of doubts a day earlier about Mr. Trump’s ethics plan, which includes retaining his own stake in his business empire and putting it in a trust managed by his two adult sons. Mr. Shaub, during an unusual news conference at the Brookings Institution, a policy research center in Washington, said that Mr. Trump had not gone far enough and would leave himself susceptible to “suspicions of corruption.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/13/us/politics/rep-jason-chaffetz-ethics-monitor-investigation-threat.html?action=click&contentCollection=us&module=NextInCollection®ion=Footer&pgtype=article&version=newsevent&rref=collection%2Fnews-event%2Fdonald-trump-white-house

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Donald J. Trump? @realDonaldTrump
What are Hillary Clinton's people complaining about with respect to the F.B.I. Based on the information they had she should never.....

1h
Donald J. Trump? @realDonaldTrump
have been allowed to run - guilty as hell. They were VERY nice to her. She lost because she campaigned in the wrong states - no enthusiasm!

As honeymoons go, Donald Trump’s wasn’t much to write home about. He was voted in as the most unpopular president-elect in modern history and got slightly less unpopular in the weeks that followed, as the goodwill flowed. Even then, though, he clearly remained the most unpopular president-elect in modern history. Again, that was the honeymoon.

And now it’s over.

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Quinnipiac is the first high-quality pollster to poll on Trump twice since the election. And while its poll in late November showed his favorable rating rising from 34 percent to 44 percent, that number has dropped back to 37 percent, which is about where it stood for much of the campaign. That’s tied for Trump’s worst favorable rating in a poll since his election. And a majority — 51 percent — now have an unfavorable view of him.

Likewise, the Quinnipiac poll shows a drop in confidence in Trump across the board. Although 59 percent were optimistic about the next four years under Trump in November, today that number is 52 percent. While 41 percent thought he would be a better leader than President Obama, it’s now 34 percent. While 52 percent thought he would help the nation's economy, it’s now 47 percent. While 40 percent thought his policies would help their personal financial situation, it’s now 27 percent. While 53 percent thought he’d take the country in the right direction, it’s now 45 percent.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/01/10/this-new-poll-has-all-kinds-of-bad-news-for-donald-trump/?tid=sm_tw_pp&utm_term=.8c5561ac0f7d&wprss=rss_the-fix

The director of the federal Office of Government Ethics on Saturday accused Senate Republicans of rushing confirmations for nominees in President-elect Donald Trump's administration.

In a letter to leading Senate Democrats, Walter Shaub, Jr., the ethics office director, said the busy hearing schedule had overwhelmed his office. He said it had not completed ethics screening reviews on several nominees, which he described as a concern.

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Shaub’s letter to the senators comes just days before the Senate is set to hold a flurry of confirmation hearings beginning on Tuesday. In the letter, Shaub said that the schedule could leave some nominees with “potentially unknown or unresolved ethics issues.”

“I am not aware of any occasion in the four decades since OGE was established when the Senate held a confirmation hearing before the nominee had completed the ethics review process,” he said.

http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/313175-ethics-office-accuses-gop-of-rushing-trump-cabinet-confirmations

Florida attorney general Pam Bondi, who came under scrutiny last year for her office’s dealings with Trump University and President-elect Donald Trump, will take a job in Trump’s White House, according to a person familiar with the decision.

It was not immediately clear what her title would be. Bondi was not among a lengthy list of White House appointments Trump announced on Wednesday.

A Washington watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service last year charging that Trump’s charitable foundation violated its tax-exempt status by making a $25,000 donation to a political group associated with Bondi in 2013. Bondi later decided not to pursue claims by Florida residents that Trump University had defrauded them.

Trump’s foundation paid a $2,500 fine to the IRS last year for the donation to the Bondi-connected group. At the time of its complaint CREW’s board was led by David Brock, who ran two super-PACs backing Democrat Hillary Clinton, Trump’s general election opponent.

https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-01-05/florida-attorney-general-bondi-said-to-have-job-under-trump