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 · July 3
Recent additions to the record
ProPublica: Supreme Court's October 2025 Term First to Decide More Cases by Shadow Docket Than Argued Opinion
Linn County Iowa Board Votes 2-1 for 18-Month Data Center Moratorium, Effective Immediately
June 30, 2026ICE Arrests Three at NYC Immigration Courts, in First Documented Violations of June 24 Nationwide Injunction
Loudon County TN Commission Votes 6-Month Data-Center Moratorium After Resident Hearing
June 30, 2026SAVE Act Dies in Senate After NDAA Attachment Fails; Citizenship-Proof Voting Laws Spread Across 9 States
Supreme Court Eliminates Nationwide Injunctions, Stripping the Broadest Judicial Check on Executive Action
Supreme Court Strikes Down Trump's Birthright-Citizenship Executive Order at Term's End
Trump Disclosure Shows $1.2B in 2025 Crypto Earnings; $436M Traced to Foreign Interests
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.