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 · August 11
ICE Bodycam Rollout On Track for August, But Footage Release Left to Agency Discretion
2025 · August 11Military preparing to activate hundreds of D.C. National Guard members
2025 · August 11Texas Public Utility Commission sues AG Ken Paxton to block release of Bitcoin miner facility data; invokes terrorism th
2025 · August 11Trump Opens $12.5 Trillion in Retirement Savings to Cryptocurrency and Private Equity Risk
2025 · August 11Trump Federalizes DC Police and Deploys 800 National Guard Troops Despite Declining Crime
2025 · August 11Trump Nominates Partisan Heritage Foundation Economist to Lead Bureau of Labor Statistics
Recent additions to the record
ICE Bodycam Rollout On Track for August, But Footage Release Left to Agency Discretion
Meta's 'Forge the Future' PAC Funds Florida Legislative Leaders Who Killed AI Bill of Rights, Weakened Data Center Rules
Wired: DHS Pays Contractors to Photograph Deported People's Homes Abroad
GOP Congressional Candidate Calls US Citizens Shot Dead by ICE 'Collateral Damage'
ICE Arrests 75+ U-Visa Crime Victims During Operation Metro Surge, Reversing Decades of Protection Policy
ACLU Suit Against DOJ National Voter Database Proceeds as 12 States Comply Voluntarily, Courts Dismiss 5 State Challenges
Advocacy Groups Rally Broome County Courthouse as 287(g) Termination Deadline Nears
August 6, 2026Federal Authorities Threaten Hennepin County Sheriff Dawanna Witt With Prosecution Over ICE Detainer Refusal
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.