Democracy doesn’t fall.
It cascades.
4288 verified events. 7,682 named actors. Court records, government filings, investigative reporting — sourced and indexed from 1142 to today.
Which capture lane was dominant when?
Each year normalized to 100% — the bands show which mechanisms of institutional capture were most prominent across 56 years of record. Hover a band to isolate it. Click any year to enter that year.
On this day · October 14
Florida Officials Concealed $608 Million Federal Funding for Immigration Detention Facility
2020 · October 14FBI Enables Social Media Suppression of Hunter Biden Laptop Story Despite Knowing Authenticity
1982 · October 14Reagan Declares Intensified War on Drugs: Federal Drug Enforcement Budget Skyrockets as Incarceration Becomes National P
Recent additions to the record
DHS Confirms ICE Processed 14 Detainees in Roxbury, NJ Warehouse Parking Lot; Rep. Mejia Cites Court Order
Judge Kelly Grants Preliminary Injunction Against White House Hard-Pass Ban on CNN, Politico, MS NOW on Due Process and Two First Amendment Grounds
DOJ Brief Defends White House's Altered Armstrong Arrest Photo as Protected Speech, Emptywheel Reports
HSI Agents Search Rep. Ilhan Omar's D.C.-Area Home on a DOJ-Secured Warrant 22 Days Before the Midterms; No Charges Filed
NYT: Musk Has Given $276 Million to Republican Groups Since July, About $366 Million This Cycle
ICE Agent Strikes Miguel Parra-Hernandez With a Vehicle in Houston Pursuit; Sheriff and ICE Give Different Accounts
Judge AliKhan Contemplates Consolidating the LULAC, NAACP and DSCC Polling-Place Suits; LULAC Amends Its Complaint to Add DOJ and the FBI
Judge Sooknanan Vacates DOJ's Voter List Maintenance Policy in Common Cause v. DOJ: Vacatur Only, With No Order on Data Already Transferred
Curated timelines
Hand-picked swimlane views — pick a thread and read the cascade as it built. Each is a story you can read in five minutes and share as a URL.
Eleven named figures, one think tank, and a transition team blueprint that became governance in real time.
From Reagan-era founding through the six-three majority — the named architects and the justices they …
The Roberts Court ruling on January 21, 2010 — and the cascade of dark money, super PACs, and constitutional …
Two corporations, one agency, and a quarter-century of building the infrastructure that 2025 weaponized.
Both terms on one chart. The first term was chaotic, the second is operational. The difference is the …
Jeffrey Epstein's operation depended on institutional cooperation — from a U.S. Attorney's secret …
Built to be used
Compose, share, cite.
Pick actors. Set a year range. Filter by lane. The chart re-renders live; the URL is the citation. Every event has stable IDs and a JSON endpoint.
For journalistsPatterns, not anecdotes.
Twelve capture lanes show coordination across decades. Actor pages plot every event on a swimlane. Source tiers tell you what is court-record solid.
For citizensRead it as history.
Walk decade by decade. Every event has plain-language context: what happened, why it matters, where it fits in the cascade.
The most-documented actors
The patterns become unmistakable when you put them in order.
This timeline is the data layer for an ongoing investigation. The reporting traces how each captured institution enables the next.