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 · October 21
Ethics Probe Launched into Border Czar's Contract Ties with Detention Firms
2025 · October 21Trump Fires Export-Import Bank Inspector General as Oversight Purge Continues
2025 · October 21Trump Demands $230 Million from DOJ as 'Compensation' for Investigations
2025 · October 21UN Human Rights Experts Condemn US Boat Strikes as 'Extrajudicial Executions'
2025 · October 21Russ Vought Emerges as "Shadow President" Running Government During Trump Disengagement
2024 · October 21Cochise County supervisor pleads guilty over 2022 certification refusal
Recent additions to the record
Eyes on ICE Relays Marshall Project, 19th Reporting on Bluebonnet Pregnant Detainees and ICE Miscarriage Data
Justice Department and White House Announce the Fraud Whistleblower Incentive Program (WHIP): Cash for Tips Before Conviction, With Trump Naming Himself Arbitrator
PRRI American Values Survey Released Oct. 20, 2026 Finds 35% Agree the President Should Order Federal Agents to Seize Ballots and Take Over Vote Counting
Arizona Attorney General Moves to Recuse Corporation Commission Chairman Myers From the APS Rate Case
DOJ Seeks a TRO in United States v. California With HSI and USCIS Declarations on the List of Just Over 20,000 Voters
GEO Group's Third-Quarter 2026 Lobbying Form Names ICE and Homeland Security Appropriations; Forms for CoreCivic and MTC Name ICE Funding and Facilities
ICE Revised Justification Puts Amentum's Camp East Montana Contract at $2.8 Billion; Subaward Records Show Amentum and Akima Under Acquisition Logistics
Judge Sooknanan Grants Government Motion to Reassign Trujillo v. DHS (California Non-Citizen Voter Demand); Case Was Not Related to Earlier LWV v. DHS
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.