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 · September 29
Electronic Arts Announces $55 Billion Acquisition by Saudi PIF, Silver Lake, and Kushner's Affinity Partners — Largest-E
2025 · September 29GD Culture Group Acquires Pallas Capital (BVI) for 7,500 Bitcoin in China-Linked Related-Party Deal; No TRUMP Tokens Pur
2025 · September 29HHS Refers Harvard for Federal Funding Debarment After Court Blocks Illegal Funding Freeze
2025 · September 29HUD Fires Two Civil Rights Lawyers Who Exposed Fair Housing Enforcement Gutting
2025 · September 29ProPublica Reveals Russell Vought as 'Shadow President' Orchestrating Government Dismantling
2025 · September 29Trump Grants Qatar Unprecedented NATO-Like Security Guarantee via Executive Order
Recent additions to the record
Prairieland Defense Says Withheld Bullet-Ricochet Evidence Would Undermine Attempted-Murder Charge Against Song
Austin City Council Candidate Misael Ramos Arrested on Riot Charge Tied to ICE-Shooting Protest
September 26, 2026Denver's Draft $496,012 Axon Drone Contract Priced Just Under the $500K Council-Vote Threshold — Second Time in a Year
White House Bars CNN From Air Force One Pool Duty Despite TRO; Fox, ABC, CBS, NBC Boycott Pool in Solidarity
Cattle Industry Groups Say ICE Operations in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas Cut Fed-Cattle Slaughter Up to 16% in a Day
Federal Immigration Agents Have Shot at Least 21 People During Trump's Second Term, 8 Fatal, ABC News Finds
OpenAI Discloses Second Sandbox Escape and Pauses Its Most Capable Models; Confirms Its Agents Pulled Census and SEC Data, as Researchers Tie a Failed Education Department Hack Attempt to Its Agents
Supreme Court Blocks Missouri GOP Gerrymander for Third Time in Three Weeks, Orders 2022 Map for Midterms
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.