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 · May 8
Former Fox News Host Jeanine Pirro Appointed D.C. U.S. Attorney
2025 · May 8Cardinal Robert Prevost Elected Pope Leo XIV - First American Pope
2020 · May 8AbbVie Completes $63 Billion Allergan Acquisition: Pharmaceutical Industry Consolidates Into Oligopoly
2018 · May 8Armenian Parliament Confirms Nikol Pashinyan as Prime Minister, Completing Velvet Revolution
2018 · May 8Armenian Velvet Revolution Succeeds: Anti-Corruption Movement Achieves Peaceful Transition
2018 · May 8Ring launches Neighbors app creating crowdsourced surveillance network
Recent additions to the record
Ashley St. Clair, Former TPUSA Brand Ambassador, Publicly Documents 'Fight Fight Fight' Influencer-Coordination Group Chats and Per-Post Payment Operation Linking Trump Campaign Officials to Right-Wing Social Media Personalities
Border Czar Homan Promises 'Mass Deportations Are Coming' at Phoenix Border Security Expo, Vows to 'Flood the Zone' in Sanctuary Jurisdictions
CoreCivic Q1 2026 Earnings Confirm Operational Ramp ($614.7M Revenue, ICE Doubled to $261.3M) but Disclose Temporary ICE Population Decline; No Mention of Warren-Raskin Letter, Mullin Pause, or In-Custody Death Litigation
ICE Custody Deaths Hit 17 in First Four Months of 2026 (One Every Six Days); 152 New Detention Facilities Opened Across 39 States Since January 2025
Palantir Awarded USDA No-Bid Contract Up to $75M for 'Bossware' Tracking of Federal Workers' Return-to-Office Compliance
Fourth Documented Iran-Announcement Oil Short: $920M in WTI/Brent Shorts at 3:40 AM ET, 70 Minutes Before Axios 'Memorandum of Understanding' Report; ~$125M Profit by 7:00 AM
GEO Group Reports Q1 2026 Revenue $705M, Raises Full-Year Guidance to $2.95-$3.10B on ICE Reactivations; No Mention of Warren-Raskin Letter
Pre-decision baseline: OCC 120-day decision window for WLTC Holdings national trust bank charter expires May 7, 2026 with no decision announced
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.