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 29
CMS Rescinds EMTALA Guidance Requiring Emergency Abortion Care
2025 · May 29Federal Courts Rule Trump's IEEPA Tariffs Illegal in Multiple Cases
2025 · May 29SEC dismisses lawsuit against Binance
2025 · May 29Trump Administration Implements Loyalty Tests for Federal Hiring
2025 · May 29Trump Nominates Paul Ingrassia to Lead Office of Special Counsel
2025 · May 29Paramount Settles Trump's $20 Billion '60 Minutes' Lawsuit for $16 Million
Recent additions to the record
AP Investigation: ICE Detention Suicides Hit Record Fiscal-Year Pace — 10 Since Jan 2025, 7 Since October, 5 in CoreCivic/GEO Facilities
CBS News Declines to Renew Sharyn Alfonsi's Contract After CECOT Segment Conflict with Bari Weiss
Dell Federal Systems Awarded $9.7B Pentagon CETA Contract — Capstone of Trump Accounts Pledge ($6.25B), PCAST Appointment, Trump Stock Endorsement Sequence
23 Democratic Attorneys General Skip Vance's White House Anti-Fraud Task Force Meeting After One-Business-Day Invite; Fraud-Pretext Funding-Freeze Mechanism
300 Delaney Hall Detainees Launch Hunger Strike Against GEO Group ICE Facility; Pepper-Ball Clashes Outside, Sen. Andy Kim Caught in Crossfire, Gov. Sherrill Denied Entry
FPDS Audit Finds SBIR Phase III 'Exclusion of Sources' Sole-Source Fingerprint Systemic Across Defense-AI Startup Cohort — $1.0B+ Non-Competitive, 91% Anduril; Larger Firms Route Around FPDS via OTA
Trump Calls Christie, James, Walz, Pritzker 'SCUM' Defending CFTC Prediction-Market Authority While Don Jr. Advises/Invests in Kalshi and Polymarket
Trump-Endorsed Ken Paxton Defeats Incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in Texas GOP Senate Primary Runoff; Loyalty-Over-Institutionalism Purge of In-Party Dissenter
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.