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 1
Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Rhoney v. Barbosa da Cunha on Detention Without Bond Hearings
2025 · October 1DHS and CMS Share Personal Data of 79 Million Medicaid Patients With ICE
2025 · October 1DOJ Fires Top National Security Prosecutor Michael Ben'Ary Based on False Social Media Post
2025 · October 1Trump Administration Fires Federal Employees During Government Shutdown, Courts Order Reinstatement as Unions Win Injunc
2025 · October 1VA Awards Palantir $385M Contract for Veterans Data Platform Integrating HHS, DoD, SSA, and IRS Data
2025 · October 1Pope Leo XIV: Inhuman Treatment of Immigrants 'Not Pro-Life'
Recent additions to the record
Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Rhoney v. Barbosa da Cunha on Detention Without Bond Hearings
California Bans Electrical Shock Gloves After ICE Bought 6,000 Pairs for $16.7 Million; DHS Says It 'Will Not Abide'
DOJ Charges Garces Perez With Assaulting a Federal Officer; DHS's Official Account of the Stop and CBP One Dispute Become Public
Intercept Investigation: More Than 25,000 People Deported by DHS to Third Countries Under Trump
Minnesota Truth Council Concludes Public Testimony Phase on Operation Metro Surge
September 29, 2026Trump Signs Executive Order Directing Federal Agencies to Replace 'Artificial Intelligence' With 'Super Intelligence'
San Antonio East Side Opponents Press City to Challenge Planned $66.1M ICE Detention Center
Texas Tribune Identifies ICE Agent Gregory Feathers as Shooter of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo; Harris County Grand Jury Active
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.