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 7
Supreme Court Confronts Systemic Emoluments Violations
2025 · May 7Puerto Rico Loses Over $4.7 Million in FEMA Climate Resilience Funding as Federal Recovery Stalls
2025 · May 7Trump Administration Moves to Eliminate Space and Rocket Launch Environmental Research
2025 · May 7U.S. Pushes Nations Facing Tariffs to Approve Musk's Starlink
2024 · May 7Stormy Daniels Testifies in Graphic Detail About Sexual Encounter, Trump Visibly Angry
2019 · May 7Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch Recalled from Ukraine After Giuliani-Led Smear Campaign
Recent additions to the record
GEO Group Reports Q1 2026 Revenue $705M, Raises Full-Year Guidance to $2.95-$3.10B on ICE Reactivations; No Mention of Warren-Raskin Letter
Pre-decision baseline: OCC 120-day decision window for WLTC Holdings national trust bank charter expires May 7, 2026 with no decision announced
ProPublica Disclosure Database Shows 144 Trump Administration Appointees with Palantir Holdings, Compensation, or Employment Ties
Warren Warns at Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator of Debt-Driven AI Bubble and Pre-Positioned Bailout Pathway
Politico Reveals Keith Sonderling Was Running DOL All Along; Now Positioned as Indefinite Acting Secretary
DiGenova Sworn In as AG Counselor Leading Brennan "Grand Conspiracy" Probe After Career Prosecutor Removed for Questioning Evidence
Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer Resigns Amid DOL Inspector General Misconduct Investigation
WYPR Exposes WEXMAC Contracting Method Used for $102.4M Williamsport MD Warehouse Purchase With $113M Retrofit and Up to $650M in Potential Add-On Work
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
Filter, share, cite.
Compose a view by actor, tag, capture lane, year range. 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.