Why It Matters

RAND Corporation terminated its lobbying relationship with Mercury Public Affairs LLC on May 1, 2026, according to an LDA termination filing submitted in the second quarter of 2026. The think tank had paid Mercury roughly $538,000 since registering the firm in November 2025, making it a short but significant engagement focused entirely on homeland security research issues.

The RAND Corp. LDA filing shows the relationship lasted roughly six months. Mercury billed $20,000 in the second quarter of 2025, $130,000 in the third quarter, $130,000 in the fourth quarter, and $120,000 in the first quarter of 2026 before the termination filing closed the books at zero. For a think tank that reported $514 million in total revenue in fiscal year 2024, the lobbying spend was modest. For Mercury, RAND was not among its top-tier accounts.

Mercury reported $6.67 million in total lobbying revenue across 129 disclosures in 2026, with its highest-value clients including Korea Zinc Co. Ltd. at $360,000 and Angjushev, Kocho at $330,000. The Mercury Public Affairs lobbying disclosure for RAND sits well below those figures. The firm's client base spans technology, energy, financial services, agriculture, and defense, so the loss of the RAND account is unlikely to register as a significant financial disruption.

Disclosures show no replacement firm has been hired by RAND to continue the same work.

Broader Context

The Mercury Public Affairs RAND Corp. engagement centered on homeland security research, specifically RAND's role in operating the Homeland Security Operational Analysis Center, a Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDC) sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security. RAND also operates the National Defense Research Institute under its National Security Research Division. These FFRDCs represent a core piece of RAND's federal revenue stream, which totaled $328 million of the organization's $514 million in fiscal year 2024 receipts.

That dependence on federal dollars put RAND squarely in the path of the Trump administration's government efficiency effort. DOGE undertook a sweeping campaign of federal contract terminations in 2025, and research institutions and think tanks were among the targets. RAND itself published a document in 2025 titled "Saving the Government Money: Recent Examples from RAND's National Security-Related FFRDCs", arguing that its Homeland Security Operational Analysis Center had evaluated more than $50 billion in claims and recommended at least $4 billion in savings. The document reads as a direct effort to demonstrate value to a skeptical administration.

Congressional Attention to RAND

RAND's work surfaced in at least two congressional hearings over the past year. In May 2025, Dr. Lisa Saum-Manning, Associate Director of RAND's International Security and Defense Policy Program, testified before the Senate Committee on Armed Services on Foreign Military Sales reform. Her testimony drew on a year-long RAND study involving interviews with more than 100 FMS stakeholders representing more than 1,300 years of collective experience, and offered recommendations for strengthening the Defense Security Cooperation Agency's management and oversight authorities.

In March 2026, a witness before the House Subcommittee on Health Care and Financial Services referenced a RAND study during a hearing on flood insurance and repetitive loss properties. Neither hearing produced legislation directly tied to RAND's lobbying disclosures with Mercury.

The lobbying disclosure termination came without an identifiable legislative win attached to the engagement. The specific issues listed in filings were described broadly as "issues related to homeland security research," and no bill numbers were cited in the LDA filing termination documentation.

The Bottom Line

No new lobbying firm has appeared in RAND's disclosures to pick up where Mercury left off. The Mercury Public Affairs RAND Corp. relationship brought a specific set of assets to bear. Bryan Lanza, who was involved in the early filings, is a former senior adviser on Trump's 2024 campaign, a credential that carried obvious appeal for an organization trying to protect federal contracts under a hostile administration. Patrick Costello and Trent Lefkowitz handled the bulk of the later filings through the first quarter of 2026.

The congressional staff database does not surface clear records of prior Hill experience for the Mercury lobbyists assigned to the RAND account, making it difficult to assess what committee relationships or agency access they brought beyond Lanza's campaign ties.

With no successor firm on record, it is unclear whether RAND has decided to pause external lobbying activity, redirect resources toward direct agency engagement, or is still evaluating its options. What is clear from the disclosures is that the engagement ended without a visible policy outcome, and the broader federal funding environment that prompted the hire remains unchanged.

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