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 · November 13
EDGE Group and Anduril Form UAE-US Joint Venture; UAE Buys First 50 Omen Drones for $200M
2025 · November 13Defense Secretary Hegseth Formally Unveils 'Operation Southern Spear' Military Campaign
2025 · November 13HSI Agent Fires at Justin Bryant Nelson's Car During DC Task Force Chase; No One Hit, USAO Declined Charges Against the
2024 · November 13NLRB Rules Captive Audience Meetings Are Illegal Employer Coercion (Likely Reversed 2025)
2023 · November 13Supreme Court adopts first-ever Code of Conduct — non-binding, unenforceable, no external oversight
2018 · November 13Amazon Selects NYC and Arlington for HQ2—Extracting at Least $4.6 Billion in Subsidies
Recent additions to the record
DHS Announces ICE Carried Out 483,200 Deportations and More Than 491,000 Arrests in 2026 and Calls It a Record; Figures Are DHS's, Breakdown Not Released
ProPublica: ELLY Data Flagged Four Forsyth County Voters as Dead, All Alive; Georgia Board Rejects Challenge
AP: Western Washington Acting U.S. Attorney Floyd Tells Judge Estudillo His Office Will No Longer Defend Many ICE Habeas Cases
Chris Madel, Who Quit the GOP Governor Race Over Metro Surge, Is Retained to Defend James O'Keefe Against Hennepin County Voting Charges
Washington Post Finds at Least 19 of About 300 Reviewed ICE Hires Had Use-of-Force, Lawsuit or Firing Records
November 9, 2026Greene County Judge Denies Developer's Bid to Block Springfield, Missouri's 120-Day Data Center Moratorium; Council to Vote Nov. 16 on Extension
November 9, 2026HSI Identified More Than 185,000 Administrative Subpoenas Potentially Responsive to EFF's FOIA Request, Court Filing Shows; WIRED Reported It as Subpoenas Sent
Louisiana Landowners Sue the Public Service Commission Over the 'Lightning Speed Initiative' Ahead of the Meta Hyperion Power Vote
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.