as president-elect donald trump prepares to move into the white house, his transition so far has relied on an unusual combination of political insiders and outsiders. on one side is the heritage foundation, the washington think tank whose aggressively conservative policies have contributed to the internal split among republicans. on the other are veterans of the more traditional pro-business wing of the party, who have worked for previous gop nominees and presidents. the heritage foundation has dozens of current staff members and alumni working on mr. trump<u+2019>s transition, including several in key positions, giving the group outsize importance as the new york businessman seeks to build a political network to carry into office. that includes ed feulner, a founder of the group in 1973 and its president for 36 years. mr. feulner is said to be among a small group of transition team members, including new jersey gov. chris christie and transition team director rich bagger, who have been assembling a list of recommendations for political appointments, said two people familiar with the matter. mr. feulner<u+2019>s deputy in the transition is becky norton dunlop, a former policy fellow at heritage. ken blackwell, who runs the transition group focused on domestic issues, is also a former heritage fellow. paul winfree, who is the group<u+2019>s director of economic policy studies, is overseeing a unit tasked with issues related to the office of management and budget. kay coles james, who is on heritage<u+2019>s board of trustees, is overseeing management and budget issues for the transition with ed meese, who served as attorney general under president ronald reagan. another heritage trustee, william l. walton, is working on economic issues for the transition. meanwhile, mr. trump is also relying on veterans of the transition team for 2012 republican nominee mitt romney, such as bill hagerty and jamie burke. mr. hagerty oversaw presidential appointments for mr. romney four years ago, and holds a similar position now. ms. burke has worked to recruit transition staff, and formerly worked in president george w. bush<u+2019>s administration.<u+00a0>another bush veteran is bill palatucci, the transition<u+2019>s general counsel and one of the closest confidantes of mr. christie. here are other key players in mr. trump<u+2019>s transition. ron nicol mr. nicol is a senior adviser to the boston consulting group, a firm that formerly employed mr. romney and has been influential in creating a more formal process for presidential transitions. he has been director of the transition<u+2019>s agency action team. this group was tasked with creating short memos that describe the function of various agencies and pressing issues for mr. trump<u+2019>s first days in office. many members of this action team will be included on the <u+201c>landing teams,<u+201d> which are being assembled now. these teams are unlikely to include anyone interested in jobs that must be confirmed by the senate, two transition team members said. the landing teams will serve as liaisons between the incoming administration and current agencies. in a briefing<u+00a0>wednesday, transition team members were told to be respectful and courteous to current staff at agencies. eventually, the landing teams will give way to <u+201c>beachhead teams,<u+201d> which will move into agencies when mr. trump takes office. mr. nicol is a former navy officer who worked on a nuclear ballistic missile submarine. other members of the transition team have described him as friendly and diligent. <u+2014>michael c. bender david malpass mr. malpass is contributing to the presidential transition for economic issues and the treasury department. mr. malpass, founder of economic research firm encima global llc, has been a frequent commentator on economic policy, warning in recent years of the perils of the federal reserve<u+2019>s low-rate stance and how u.s. tax policy has deterred business investment. mr. malpass ran unsuccessfully for the republican nomination for the u.s. senate in new york in 2010 and served as chief economist of bear stearns until 2008, when the company was sold to j.p. morgan chase & co. in a fire sale arranged by the u.s. government. he served as deputy assistant treasury secretary for developing nations in the reagan administration and then deputy assistant secretary of state for latin american economic affairs in the george h.w. bush administration, where he worked on the north american free trade agreement, which mr. trump has promised to revise. <u+201c>i was there at the beginning of nafta,<u+201d> he told economists at a luncheon in washington, d.c., last month. after it took force in 1994, he said, <u+201c>special interests descended upon it.<u+201d> mr. malpass has also called for scrapping the federal borrowing limit that has led to frequent and debilitating spending fights in which congress threatens to default on u.s. debt. <u+201c>this is a complete failure as a law,<u+201d> he said, adding that it should be rewritten to <u+201c>control spending before it becomes debt.<u+201d> <u+2014>nick timiraos dan dimicco mr. dimicco, a former chief executive of steelmaker nucor corp. , became a trump adviser in may and is working on the transition efforts for the u.s. trade representative<u+2019>s office, which oversees all u.s. trade diplomacy. he has been sharply critical of trade policy, which he says has turned a blind eye to currency manipulation and other subsidies by china. he has also written about the false promise of <u+201c>green jobs<u+201d> and the dangers of outsourcing. mr. dimicco, who served as nucor<u+2019>s ceo for nearly 13 years, rejected suggestions from mainstream economists that mr. trump<u+2019>s plan to threaten tariffs on major trading partners such as china would spark a trade war. <u+201c>we have been in one for more than 20 years and have yet to join the fight,<u+201d> he said in a letter to the wall street journal this year. mr. dimicco served on the u.s. manufacturing council, the principal private-sector advisory committee to the secretary of commerce, from 2008-11 and currently serves on the board of directors of duke energy. <u+2014>nick timiraos mike rogers mike rogers, a former congressman from michigan who was chairman of the house intelligence committee until 2015, has extensive connections in the intelligence community and is seen as one of the republican party<u+2019>s most recognizable national security experts. a former special agent in the federal bureau of investigation, he is helping mr. trump<u+2019>s national security transition team efforts. while in congress, he worked closely with democrats and republicans, as the intelligence committee often had a more bipartisan focus than other panels. he is a frequent guest<u+00a0>on sunday<u+00a0>news programs, often on cnn, where he had his own program, <u+201c>declassified.<u+201d> he is on the board of directors of ironnet cybersecurity and the board of advisers for next century corp., a technology company. mr. rogers is seen as a leading candidate to become the director of the central intelligence agency. working closely with him on the transition team is andrew kaiser, who served as his chief of staff on capitol hill. the former congressman<u+2019>s views haven<u+2019>t always lined up with donald trump<u+2019>s. mr. rogers has been very critical of russia, and said that russia helped edward snowden steal secrets from the national security agency and then leak them to damage secret programs. mr. trump has taken a different approach with russia, saying the u.s. and the kremlin should work together more closely. <u+2014>damian paletta ron burgess retired lt. gen. burgess is assisting the transition team for intelligence agencies. he spent 38 years in the army and served in top intelligence roles in both republican and democratic administrations. he served as director of the defense intelligence agency from 2009 until 2012. he has held senior intelligence roles in the military and other parts of the government for years. as a major general, he was director of intelligence for the pentagon<u+2019>s joint staff. he also held a senior job in the office of the director of national intelligence, leading that agency<u+2019>s intelligence staff during president george w. bush<u+2019>s administration. as head of the dia, he frequently briefed congress and met with senior military leaders about emerging threats. in 2011, for example, he submitted a 34-page assessment of global threats to congress, warning of problems in afghanistan, pakistan, iran, and terror networks, among other things. gen. burgess in 2014 became chairman of the board of noblis nsp llc, an intelligence, science, technology, and strategy nonprofit based in virginia. <u+2014>damian paletta ken blackwell mr. blackwell, an african-american former mayor of cincinnati and former ohio secretary of state, is an activist in the conservative movement who is helping the transition team on domestic issues. he is a senior fellow at the family research council, a group focused on social policy, and is a staunch friend of antiabortion rights groups such as the susan b. anthony list, for whom he has headlined galas. that cause <u+201c>is in his dna,<u+201d> said the group<u+2019>s head marjorie dannenfelser. <u+201c>he<u+2019>s also on every board you<u+2019>ve ever heard of<u+201d> in the conservative movement, she said, including club for growth. <u+2014>louise radnofsky mike mckenna mr. mckenna, president of the lobbying firm mwr strategies, is responsible for querying on mr. trump<u+2019>s behalf the obama administration<u+2019>s actions at the energy department and the nuclear regulatory commission, an independent agency overseeing nuclear power plants. mr. mckenna, whose firm<u+2019>s clients include oil and natural-gas companies, is considered one of the best-connected and politically savvy republican energy consultants in washington. he has also provoked his share of controversy within the conservative energy crowd, as he has occasionally been quoted in news articles criticizing various parts of the fossil-fuel industry and the republican party. <u+2014>amy harder myron ebell mr. ebell, a top official at the conservative competitive enterprise institute, is tasked with finding out the lay of the land at president barack obama <u+2019>s environmental protection agency. he isn<u+2019>t expected to be in the running to lead the agency, say people close the trump team. mr. ebell also chairs the cooler heads coalition, a group that disputes the scientific consensus that the burning of fossil fuels is raising the earth<u+2019>s temperature. mr. ebell, known in washington as one of the most outspoken critics of this scientific consensus, could play a role in shaping mr. trump<u+2019>s approach to unraveling mr. obama<u+2019>s climate agenda, which has been pursued largely at the epa. mr. ebell has written in various publications to take issue with global warming <u+201c>alarmism<u+201d> and criticized pope francis for his position on climate change. <u+2014>amy harder andrew bremberg mr. bremberg, the lead for the department of health and human services, worked in the agency for most of president george w. bush<u+2019>s administration as a young aide. he spent the next few years outside of government at an organization that operates federally sponsored research and development centers before taking a job with senate republican leader mitch mcconnell and then joining wisconsin gov. scott walker<u+2019>s gop primary presidential campaign as policy director. mr. walker was one of the earliest candidates to propose a detailed and far-ranging health-care proposal. mr. bremberg also served on the abbreviated transition team for mr. romney, where he was brought in by more senior members to help on health policy. that group, stocked with conservative health policy luminaries, had planned to overturn the then-two-year-old affordable care act by changing the federal government<u+2019>s interpretation of the law in a way that would have prevented its tax credits from going into effect in most parts of the country. that was intended to start the dissolution of the law and, in turn, force democrats to cooperate in shaping the fallout. now the law is far more intricately entwined in the nation<u+2019>s health system, and has for three years enrolled millions of people in different kinds of coverage. <u+201c>andrew is a very smart and savvy health policy adviser and he is also very, very committed in his beliefs,<u+201d> said tom barker, for whom mr. bremberg worked at hhs, and who invited him to join the romney transition team. <u+201c>if the goal is repeal and replace obamacare, my instincts are, <u+2018>well that<u+2019>s not politically feasible.<u+2019> andrew<u+2019>s: <u+2018>if that<u+2019>s what we<u+2019>re told to do, we<u+2019>re going to find a way to do it.<u+2019><u+201d> <u+2014>louise radnofsky write to michael c. bender at mike.bender@wsj.com corrections & amplifications: ed feulner<u+2019>s deputy in the transition team is becky norton dunlop. an earlier version of this article misspelled ms. dunlop<u+2019>s middle name (nov.14, 2016).
donald trump<u+2019>s transition team relies on a mix of gop traditionalists and outsiders - wsj
michael c. bender