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 11
Supreme Court Extends SNAP Administrative Stay to November 13; Justice Jackson Would Deny
2022 · November 11FTX Cryptocurrency Exchange Collapses in $32 Billion Fraud, Exposing Crypto Regulation Failure
2013 · November 11Citigroup Lobbyists Write 70 of 85 Lines in House Banking Deregulation Bill
1919 · November 11American Legion Founded with Corporate Backing as Anti-Radical Force
Recent additions to the record
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
November 9, 2026Ohio Capital Journal: Voters in All 18 Ohio Communities With Data Center Measures Chose to Curb or Ban Them; Piqua Recalls Commissioners Who Approved a Meta Data Center
November 9, 2026Trump Nominates Palantir Security Chief Michael LoSapio to Lead CISA
November 9, 2026Trump Says Iran War Is 'Militarily, Effectively Over' Days After Midterm Losses
AP: Staff of the Commerce Department's AI Safety Center Were Asked to Report Informally to the White House; the Center Has No Permanent Leader and Has Stopped Publishing Research
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.