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 6
D.R.I. Judge Orders Full November SNAP Payments to States by November 7
2025 · November 6FAA Announces 10% Air Traffic Reduction at 40 Airports Due to Shutdown
2025 · November 6Trump Pardons Former Tennessee House Speaker Glen Casada and Chief of Staff Convicted of Federal Corruption
2025 · November 6Federal Judge Rules Border Patrol Commander Bovino Lied Under Oath, Issues Sweeping Use-of-Force Injunction
2025 · November 6Trump Announces Kazakhstan Joining Abraham Accords Despite Existing Diplomatic Relations with Israel Since 1992
2025 · November 6SCOTUS shadow-docket stay in Trump v. Orr clears State Department passport policy requiring sex-at-birth marker
Recent additions to the record
DOJ Counselor Henry Whitaker Moves to Withdraw in the Letitia James Appeal, Saying He Is Leaving the Government
November 5, 2026Florida's 27th Congressional District: Democrat Eliott Rodriguez Demands Miami-Dade Elections Supervisor Alina Garcia Recuse From Recount After She Called Salazar the Winner
November 5, 2026GM Agrees to $220 Million Settlement With 35 States and D.C. Over Smart Driver Data Sold to Brokers for Insurance Products
November 5, 2026Harmeet Dhillon Resigns as DOJ Civil Rights Head; Blanche Says He Accepted the Resignation
November 5, 2026Michigan: Oakland County Sheriff Sends Case of Former Deputy Accused of Accessing Flock Database After Joining ICE to Prosecutor; Ends Flock Drone Pilot
November 5, 2026Wisconsin: Paid Social Media Posters Recruited Under Nondisclosure Agreement to Promote OpenAI/Oracle/Vantage Port Washington Data Center, Wisconsin Watch Reports
November 4, 2026Abdul El-Sayed Defeats Mike Rogers in Michigan Senate Race, Becoming the First Muslim Elected to the U.S. Senate
Arizona: SpaceX Hosts Cochise County Meeting on Proposed Six-Gigawatt Data Center Filed Under Tombstone Resources LLC
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.