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 28
Palantir Wins USCIS Contract for "VOWS" Marriage Fraud Detection Platform, Expanding Immigration Surveillance
2025 · October 28Trump Purges 12 ICE Field Directors, Replaces with Border Patrol Loyalists to Escalate Deportations
2018 · October 28Malafaia Brokers Evangelical Coalition — Bolsonaro Wins Brazilian Presidency; Post-Election Church Visit Seals Pastoral
2017 · October 28First QAnon Post on 4chan's /pol/: Chan Culture's Conspiracy Architecture Produces a Mass Political Movement
2016 · October 28Corrections Corporation of America Rebrands as CoreCivic After DOJ Phase-Out Announcement and Undercover Exposé
2016 · October 28ProPublica Exposes Facebook's Algorithmic Redlining: Digital Ad Platform Enables Housing Discrimination at Scale
Recent additions to the record
City of Alachua, FL Commission Votes 5-0 on Second Reading of a One-Year Data Center Moratorium, Reported Oct. 27
October 27, 2026Gregg Township Supervisors Unanimously Grant PNK Group Conditional Use for an Allenwood Data Center
October 27, 2026San Diego City Council Unanimously Passes 45-Day Data Center Moratorium After NAVWAR Site Proposal
October 27, 2026State Department Official Says Flávio Bolsonaro and Family Will Receive U.S. Visas After He Leaves Brazil Past a Passport-Surrender Deadline
Anthropic Files Public IPO Registration Statement Disclosing an October FTC Civil Investigative Demand and a Risk Factor on Being "Disproportionately or Selectively Targeted"
Aurora City Council Falls Short of the Seven Votes Needed to Reconsider an Indefinite Data-Center Moratorium; Trident Project Would Be Exempt Either Way
October 26, 2026CISA Adds the PHP Remote-Code-Execution Flaws to Its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog; the Fix Deadline Binds Federal Civilian Agencies Only
DHS Secretary Mullin Ratifies Every Final ICE Civil Fine Issued Under the 2025 Interim Rule, "Out of an Abundance of Caution"
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.