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 26
Senate Confirms Amy Coney Barrett 52-48 Eight Days Before Election, Creating 6-3 Conservative Supermajority
2019 · October 26Pentagon Awards $10 Billion JEDI Cloud Contract to Microsoft Over Amazon
2017 · October 26Trump Declares Opioid Public Health Emergency Without Requesting Any New Funding
2001 · October 26Bush Signs PATRIOT Act After 45-Day Rush with Minimal Debate
1999 · October 26Robert Rubin Joins Citigroup for $126 Million After Engineering Glass-Steagall Repeal
Recent additions to the record
Lula, Reelected, Says He Had to Overcome "Interference From Outside" Through Digital Platforms and Will Regulate Them
Ninth Circuit Hears DOJ's Emergency Appeal in U.S. v. California in a Rare Sunday Argument
Trump Calls Democratic Senate Candidate El-Sayed a "Jihadist Muslim Brotherhood Member" at Port Huron Rally for Rogers
Bolts: Orange County, NY, Is Ending Its ICE Jail Contract Under the State Ban While Its Sheriff Joins a Suit Against the Law
Fifth Circuit En Banc Holds, 10-7, That Immigrants Detained Under the Mandatory-Detention Provision Are Not Entitled to Bond Hearings, Reversing Habeas Grants to Three Texas Men
Judge AliKhan Consolidates the LULAC, NAACP and DSCC Polling-Place Suits for All Purposes Under LULAC v. DHS
Newport, Oregon and DHS Settle Airport ICE Detention Suit; DHS Owes 30 Days' Notice, No Permanent Bar
The Intercept: Fellowship PAC Routed $600,000 Through Bo Hines's Nxum Group to Support Democrats Torres, Goodlander and Warner
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.