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 30
Chutkan Sets a Saturday TRO Hearing on DHS's Voter-Data Policy as the Government Tries to Tie the Case to Boasberg's
2026 · October 30Ninth Circuit Denies DOJ's Emergency Bid to Make California Sequester Flagged Mail Ballots, Over a Dissent
2025 · October 30Blue Owl Q3 2025 Earnings Beat Revenue Forecast by 7% — Stock Falls 4.6% Anyway as Investors Price In Private-Credit Str
2025 · October 30DOJ Launches Criminal Investigation Into Black Lives Matter Foundation for Alleged Donor Fraud
2025 · October 30ICE Agents Shoot U.S. Citizen Carlos Jimenez Near Los Angeles School
2025 · October 30Trump Officials Flee to Military Bases: Miller, Noem, Hegseth, Rubio Create Militarized "Green Zone"
Recent additions to the record
Chutkan Sets a Saturday TRO Hearing on DHS's Voter-Data Policy as the Government Tries to Tie the Case to Boasberg's
Ninth Circuit Denies DOJ's Emergency Bid to Make California Sequester Flagged Mail Ballots, Over a Dissent
Acting Deputy AG McCotter's Letters Warn State Election Officials of Prison Over Record Preservation, Votebeat Reports
CBS: DOJ Issued Grand Jury Subpoenas to California State and Local Election Officials; Orange County Says One Seeks 77 Registrants' Records
DOJ Announces 18 More North Carolina Indictments for Illegal Voting in 2024, 30 Statewide This Year, Days Before the Election
Intercept Analysis: AI Super PACs Put Only 5 Percent of Direct Spending Into Contested General-Election Races
Unions and Voting-Rights Groups Sue DOJ and DHS in N.D. Cal. Over Threats to Prosecute Election Workers
Argentina's Migration Agency Says Flávio Bolsonaro Crossed at Puerto Iguazú at 10:50 p.m. ART Oct. 27 and Boarded a Baires Fly Jet for Guayaquil, After Brazil's Passport Order
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.