The Brief

With some of the year’s biggest decisions still pending, nearly a quarter of California’s 120 lawmakers may soon be unemployed. Many of them are thinking about their next job as the Legislature wraps up this month.

If past experience is any guide, at least one in five departing lawmakers will end up working for companies or organizations trying to influence state government. In all, 20 incumbents are leaving elected office this year and another 15 are running for other seats.

“August is kind of … the interview period,” departing Visalia Republican Assemblymember Devon Mathis told CalMatters. “You see people that are trying to shop, you know, for a third-house gig or something like that,” he said, referring to lobbying organizations.

A CalMatters review of the 180 lawmakers who left office since 2012 reveals that around 40 of them registered as lobbyists, worked as political consultants or took executive-level jobs with companies or organizations actively lobbying at the Capitol.

Ethics experts say the prospect of current lawmakers job hunting as they’re voting on bills raises concerns that their future employers could influence their votes in the final weeks of the session.

A legislative ethics committee handout given to departing lawmakers outlines the stakes. It warns that they could face criminal charges if they “take official action in exchange for a promise of future employment (this is bribery).” It’s also illegal if they “use state resources to search for or secure outside or prospective employment.”

No disclosure requirements for job-hunting lawmakers

Despite the potential criminal consequences, there are no requirements for lawmakers to tell the public if they’re negotiating or actually have a new employment agreement with an outside organization trying to influence state policy.

That’s a problem, said Sean McMorris, the transparency, ethics and accountability program manager for California Common Cause.

He said powerful and wealthy industries and advocacy organizations love hiring former lawmakers “because they already know the system, and they have access and influence to other politicians there at the Capitol.”

He said it’s also why California, like nearly every other state, has “revolving door” rules intended to keep companies and organizations from dangling future salaries in front of lawmakers in exchange for legislative favors or state contracts.

The rules include a “cooling-off period” preventing lawmakers from directly lobbying the Legislature for at least a year after leaving office. These restrictions are intended to prevent lawmakers from using fresh insider knowledge to help their new employer game the system.

But there’s nothing preventing a former lawmaker from taking a job at a company that’s lobbying the Legislature during their cooling-off period as long as he or she is not the one directly discussing policy with their former colleagues.

“Providing compensated advice to a client, including a lobbyist, lobbying firm or lobbyist employer, is not prohibited so long as the former Assemblymember does not communicate with sitting legislators or legislative staff,” according to the ethics committee handout.

Plus, they can still lobby the governor’s administration and local agencies.

McMorris said it’s time to update the laws to require that lawmakers at the very least disclose when they have a new job lined up while they’re still casting votes.

“Not only would that help the public, just for transparency’s sake,” he said, “but it would also help … just to keep them honest.”

Lobbyists gather around a television to watch as a bill is voted on before the Assembly at the state Capitol on Aug. 31, 2022.

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Rich Pedroncelli

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Dan Schnur, the former chairperson of the state’s ethics watchdog agency, the Fair Political Practices Commission, agreed that more transparency is needed.

“You’d hope,” he said, “there would be a way to make sure that the public did have an understanding if these types of (future employment) conversations were (happening) while the legislator was still casting votes.”

Are outgoing lawmakers job hunting?

There are 20 incumbent legislators who will be out of a job this year because they are termed out of office, they are not seeking re-election or they ran for another office this year and lost in the March primary. Another 15 legislators are candidates for local, state or federal office including 13 on the ballot this November and two seeking statewide office in 2026.

Some might retire from public life, go back to their old careers or consider a 2026 run for another state office. Those who aren’t are probably looking for work.

Mathis is not shy about his career plans when he leaves office this year. Last month, he started a public relations firm, and he agreed to work for an energy company, Origyn International, as a “public benefit project specialist.” He said he checked with state ethics officials to make sure he wasn’t violating state laws.

Mathis said that as a combat veteran, whose military service included logistical planning, he is a natural fit for the company that works in multiple states to build and finance infrastructure, including for public agencies. As for any potential conflicts with his current job, Mathis says there aren’t any, and there won’t be.

“My work with Origyn is more about helping communities and kind of filling in the gaps where the government doesn’t have the ability,” Mathis said. “So I don’t foresee any, you know, direct impact that would affect their business or help them.”

Origyn hasn’t taken a position on any legislation since the start of the 2023-24 legislative session, according to the CalMatters Digital Democracy database.

Assemblymember Reggie Jones-Sawyer, a Democrat from Los Angeles, also is in need of a job after he lost a bid for an LA City Council seat in the March primary.

Jones-Sawyer told CalMatters he’s not going to discuss his career with potential employers until he casts the final vote of the session.

He said his personal attorney advised him not to job hunt while still casting votes. Jones-Sawyer said it didn’t take much convincing, given what happened to Curren Price. The Los Angeles City Council member and former state senator has pleaded not guilty to corruption charges in a case that included allegations Price voted for measures before the council that financially benefited his wife.

Jones-Sawyer said he could see how easily a lawmaker could get themselves in similar trouble.

“All of a sudden, they have a half-million dollar job in September,” he said. “And … the press is … speculating, ‘Well, that looks a little hinky and suspicious.’ ”

Lawmakers earn $128,215 a year, plus per diem and benefits. Lawmakers will receive their final state paycheck in late December.

CalMatters reached out to other lawmakers who don’t have active campaigns to ask them about their career plans and how they are balancing a potential job hunt with the demands during the final weeks of the session. Here are the responses for some of them:

• A spokesperson for former Democratic Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon said he has no plans to lobby and wants to spend more time with his young daughter, but didn’t go into details about Rendon’s future career aspirations.
• Ukiah Democratic Assemblymember Jim Wood “does not have any plans for what he will do after he leaves office and has postponed any discussions of that until later this fall,” said his spokesperson, Cathy Mudge.
• Republican Sen. Brian Dahle said in an interview he’s not job hunting and plans to go back to his family farm in Lassen County. But he said he was open to the eventual possibility of working for an organization that could help small businesses benefit from state policy.
• Napa Democratic Sen. Bill Dodd “plans to remain active, and expects to serve the public and his community in some way. For the remainder of his term, he’s focused on his work as a senator and delivering results for his district and California,” said spokesperson Paul Payne.
• Los Angeles Democratic Assemblymember Wendy Carrillo said in an email she hopes “to transition what I’ve learned in the Legislature as a visiting lecturer or professor in a public policy class at the university level, continue to advocate for the issues I am passionate about, and if my local state Senate office were to become available in 2026, I’m all in.” 
• Glendale Democratic Sen. Anthony Portantino “has not made future plans,” said his spokesperson Lerna Kayserian Shirinian. 
• Assemblymember Freddie Rodriguez, a Democrat from Chino who’s a former emergency medical technician, suggests he may take an advocacy gig. “Assemblymember Rodriguez … looks forward to using his legislative experience and chairmanship of the Assembly Emergency Management Committee to help Californians better prepare for climate change-related emergencies in any way he can,” his spokesperson, Gibson Martucci, said in an email.

Assemblymember Freddie Rodriguez, a Pomona Democrat, tracks bills during session at the state Capitol in Sacramento on Aug. 24, 2023

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Rahul Lal

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CalMatters

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How lawmakers can keep voting

Lawmakers are supposed to recuse themselves from any official actions that have “‘direct and significant’ financial impact on an entity with whom they are negotiating employment or who has made them an employment offer,” according to the ethics committee handout.

But state ethics guidelines still allow voting on bills that could benefit a prospective employer. The guidelines say lawmakers can discuss — and vote on — bills that would benefit a “significant segment” of an industry. It’s only a problem if the bill deals specifically with their would-be employer.

So a lawmaker with a job pending at, say, a major tech company can continue to vote on legislation if it impacts all tech companies — and not just the one that’s going to be paying them.

No California lawmaker has been charged in recent memory with violating the rules, according to a CalMatters review.

Still, Jones-Sawyer said the risks just aren’t worth it for him as a Black man who’s visited prisons as part of his efforts to change the justice system that disproportionately penalizes men like him.

“I don’t want to be that first one,” he said.

California's recent lobbying defections

In 2017, the Legislature changed the one-year cooling-off period rules to also prohibit lawmakers who leave office during the middle of a two-year legislative session from lobbying the Legislature while the session is ongoing — and for a year after.

The rule change happened after a couple of high-profile lobbying defections.

Kern County Democrat Michael Rubio abruptly quit the state Senate in 2013 to work for Chevron, saying he wanted to spend more time with his family. He later became a lobbyist for the oil company.

In 2015, Henry Perea, a Fresno Democrat, quit the Legislature to work for a pharmaceutical trade association. He went on to lobby for the Western States Petroleum Association.

More recently, Jim Frazier, a Fairfield Democrat, resigned in 2021 to take a job in the transportation sector after he served as chairperson of the Assembly Transportation Committee. He’s now a lobbyist for the Arc of California, a group that advocates for disabled people.

The most recent mid-term defection was Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez, a longtime labor advocate. She left mid-session in 2022 to become the head of the California Labor Federation, one of the most influential groups in the union-friendly, Democrat-controlled Legislature.

Gonzalez never registered as a lobbyist, and she said she never needed to.

State lobbying rules say that a legislator-turned-advocate only needs to register as a lobbyist if they “spend at least one-third of his or her compensated time in a calendar month engaging in direct communication” with legislators and their staff. Gonzalez told CalMatters she doesn’t spend nearly that much time talking to her former colleagues about policy.

She said that she also made sure not to discuss specific bills with her recent colleagues during her mandatory cooling-off period.

“Legislators would call me and they’d be like, ‘Can I talk to you about this?’” she told Calmatters. “And I’m like, ‘Well, you can talk to me, but I can’t respond.’ ”

Gonzalez said that after the Labor Federation offered her a job, she knew she was going to leave the Assembly in July 2022, so she decided to resign in January of that year to avoid spending six months recusing herself on bills that she cared passionately about.

Voting rules obscure formal recusals

When lawmakers do actually recuse themselves because of a conflict of interest from a potential employer — or any other reason — there’s no easy way for the public to determine if they did.

As CalMatters reported in multiple stories this year, lawmakers regularly stay silent when it’s time to vote on bills. Not voting counts the same as a “no” vote, and lawmakers dodge thousands of controversial votes each year to avoid accountability and avoid angering colleagues or influential lobbying organizations.

The state’s official bill-tracking website only records a non-vote as “NVR,” short for “No Vote Recorded.” It’s recorded the same if a lawmaker had an excused absence or if they recuse themselves because of a conflict of interest. That includes pending job offers.

California’s 120 legislators have recorded more than 17,000 non-votes so far this year, according to the Digital Democracy database.

The Digital Democracy database, which uses artificial intelligence to record every word spoken in legislative hearings, could only find two examples of members discussing recusing themselves from votes on bills since 2023.

Republican Sen. Roger Niello, whose family owns car dealerships in the Sacramento area, recused himself on a 2023 bill that dealt with car dealerships.

Assemblymember Joe Patterson, another Republican from the Sacramento region, recused himself from voting on a 2023 bill dealing with charging ports for portable electronic devices such as smartphones. Patterson’s wife works for Apple.

In both cases, the state’s official bill-tracking website recorded the recusals as NVRs.

Government ethics experts say Californians deserve more transparency.

They argue that the public has a right to know whether their lawmakers’ non-votes represented legitimate absences, were abstentions, or they were formal recusals due to conflicts of interests, including from pending job offers.

“If they conflicted out, it should be noted,” said McMorris of California Common Cause.

Jessica Levinson, founding director of Loyola Law School’s Public Service Institute, said the public has a right to know “why their representatives aren’t weighing in.”

“Is it because they have something to do that day, because they don’t want to take a position,” she said, “or because, under the rules, they couldn’t?”

Hans Poschman and Thomas Gerrity, members of the CalMatters Digital Democracy team, contributed to this story.

Editor’s note: CalMatters staff are members of a union that’s affiliated with the California Labor Federation.

GUADALAJARA, Mexico — Mexico took advantage of a defensive blunder by South Korea to win 1-0 and become the first team to advance to the knockout stage of the World Cup on Thursday.

It marks a major triumph for a team that failed to get out of the group stage in 2022 and now has won twice on home soil in front of jubilant crowds.

Luis Romo scored in the 50th minute after South Korea goalkeeper Kim Seung-gyu collided with defender Lee Gi-hyuk and dropped the ball inside the area. Romo easily found the open net after picking up the loose ball.

The South Koreans nearly equalized in the 87th minute when Mexico goalkeeper Raúl Rangel stopped a header from close range by Cho Gue-sung, then made an even better save on the rebound, extending his right arm to keep the ball from crossing the line.

Mexico has six points from two Group A matches, three more than South Korea and five more than the Czech Republic and South Africa, who drew 1-1 earlier Thursday in Atlanta.

The top two teams from each group move on to the knockout stage, along with the best eight third-place teams. A round of 32 is being played for the first time at the World Cup after the tournament was expanded to 48 teams.

Los Angeles city housing officials are pushing back on allegations from the outgoing city attorney, who claims that a legal aid provider has failed to comply with its taxpayer-funded contract to help tenants avoid eviction.

At stake in the dispute is $177 million — approved months ago by the mayor and City Council but still awaiting the city attorney’s signature — to help renters stay housed.

For more than a year, City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto has refused to authorize new long-term funding for the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, or LAFLA. On Thursday, she told LAist the delay was due to the nonprofit’s alleged failure to account for how it spends city funds.

“They didn't comply with the monthly reporting that they were supposed to do,” Feldstein Soto said. “They still haven't done so.”

LAFLA leaders strongly disputed those claims, saying they have provided detailed accountings of their caseloads and tenant outcomes. Barbara Schultz, LAFLA’s housing director, told LAist her organization has fully complied with the terms of its contract.

“After months of highly unusual investigations, document requests and audits that extend well beyond the scope of [the city attorney’s] office, she has failed to identify any misconduct — because there isn't any,” Schultz said.

Officials with the L.A. Housing Department also told LAist the contract monitoring and reporting requirements have been upheld.

“LAFLA has complied with every request for information put forth by LAHD,” said department spokesperson Sharon Sandow. “Like all new programs, tracking and information systems have been improved as the program has matured over the past five years. LAFLA provided the information requested.”

City attorney’s dispute with legal aid group runs deeps

Feldstein Soto has frequently clashed with LAFLA. Separate from its tenant defense work, the organization has joined lawsuits against the city over its homelessness policies.

Feldstein Soto has objected to giving LAFLA city funds, telling council members in a confidential memo earlier this year that the city should “reconsider the award of such a large contract to a frequent litigant against the city.”

Since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, LAFLA has led Stay Housed L.A., a city- and county-funded effort to provide eviction defense, rent relief and other aid to tenants at risk of losing their housing.

The city has also tasked LAFLA with scaling up the city’s “Right To Counsel” ordinance, which provides free attorneys to qualified low-income renters facing eviction. Statistics show that landlords almost always have attorneys in eviction proceedings, but renters rarely come to court with lawyers of their own.

Last year, Feldstein Soto rejected a new five-year contract with the organization, saying any further funding should have gone through a competitive bidding process. The city responded by opening up a new call for submissions. Officials ultimately selected the Legal Aid Foundation to continue eviction defense services. The City Council and mayor approved that contract in April.

But Feldstein Soto has continued to withhold her signature. On Monday, she issued a report detailing why she has delayed the contract with LAFLA, as well as contracts with other tenant aid groups slated to receive funding for rent relief programs, enforcement of the city’s ordinance against tenant harassment and tenant rights education programs.

Feldstein Soto’s report included a series of audits of LAFLA from the Harrington Group, an independent accounting firm. When LAist asked if she had identified any evidence of impropriety in those audits, representatives for her office did not respond.

Data on tenant outcomes

Feldstein Soto said she believes information provided by LAFLA is insufficient to determine how many eviction cases involving city funding went to court, what the outcomes were or the average cost per case.

“The funds that we provided have not been accounted for properly in any way, shape or form,” Feldstein Soto said.

On Wednesday, the city’s housing department published a report saying Stay Housed L.A. has assisted tenants in 27,273 eviction cases, including 6,522 cases in which tenants were fully represented by a lawyer throughout their legal proceedings.

Over the last four years, 53% of fully represented tenants stayed in their homes, according to the report. Another 41% were able to negotiate agreements in which their landlords gave them more time to move out, forgave their overdue rent or sealed their eviction record. Less than 3% of tenants lost their case in court.

Much of the funding for the tenant aid contracts comes from the city’s so-called “mansion tax,” which could soon be scaled back by the city’s voters in a potential November ballot measure.

What comes next? 

Schultz said if city leaders are not satisfied with the accounting, they could ask for a formal audit through the City Controller’s Office. Feldstein Soto launched an audit of LAFLA last year, but has not released any findings so far. She told LAist more information could be coming soon.

“I am likely to file both a public report and a confidential report with my client, because you can't just gift away public funds without an audit trail and without transparency and accountability,” Feldstein Soto said.

Meanwhile, tenant advocates say smaller legal aid nonprofits that receive city funding as subcontractors are in danger of running out of money soon. Lawyers could be laid off and tenants could become homeless if funding is not approved quickly, they argue.

Schultz said the City Council may need to look for ways to approve the funding without the involvement of Feldstein Soto, who recently came in third place in the June primary election. She will not advance to the general election for a second term.

“I think that the council should definitely look at — if they had a rogue city attorney that refused to follow their directions — what other avenues they could explore,” Schultz said.

City Council members have introduced a motion calling on the city attorney’s office to explain the delay. That request was supposed to come up for a vote in a housing committee meeting this week, but it was ultimately canceled due to an earlier meeting of the full City Council that ran hours over schedule.

When I visited Taqueria Hoy in Orange, owner Rafael De Anda couldn’t wait to get home to watch Mexico kick off its World Cup stint. After decades at the helm of his taco shop — he first started it as a food truck and now has brick-and-mortar locations in Orange, Santa Ana and Anaheim — he could put his feet up and relax. The business was in good hands.

His sons, Raphael V. De Anda, 34, and Christian De Anda, 30, had been working at the taqueria since childhood. But when Rafael De Anda was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2011 and battling the disease, the young men took over the complete running of the business — with their father still an integral part.

While I get a lot of emails pitching stories for LAist, rarely does a story materialize from one of them. But when Raphael De Anda emailed me about Taqueria Hoy, including a video that captured the warmth of his and his brother’s relationship with their father, it quickly piqued my interest.

In it they are quick to praise him for his work ethic and the lessons he’s imparted to them. In honor of Father’s Day, we’re celebrating those lessons here.

Rafael De Anda makes tacos at his taqueria in Orange.

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Lesson No. 1: Keep it simple and do it well

Rafael De Anda is from Arandas in Jalisco, and crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in 1974. A few years into life in the Santa Ana area, he realized there was no good taqueria around, unless you drove to Los Angeles or San Diego. And so Taqueria De Anda was born in the 80s, before it was rebranded to Taqueria Hoy in 2020.

He says he wanted the tacos to taste just like the ones he used to have every day.  ”If you eat my tacos here, if you go to any part of Mexico, it will have to be the same,” he explained.

Taqueria Hoy has a straightforward menu, offering the usual carne asada, al pastor, pollo, chorizo and carnitas, along with cabeza (cheek) and lengua (tongue), the most tender cuts of beef.

Cabeza and carne asada tacos adorned with the Taqueria Hoy's green and red salsas.

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Cooking the meats to perfection, he says, and keeping the quality consistently good keeps people keep coming back — sometimes spanning generations.

It's one of his first lessons for his sons: Keep it simple but do it well. “ If you're not gonna eat them, don't sell it.”

That philosophy even extends to their red and green Hoysioso salsas, made in-house with high quality ingredients.

Only three people in the world know the recipe — Rafael De Anda and his two sons. And the sons have promised to make the condiment just the way he taught them.

Lesson No. 2: Honor your customers and staff

“ We just started making tacos and that's it,” Rafael De Anda said, never expecting for the business to last more than forty years. "We were busy and then we just kept going and going.”

He and his sons credit that to their customer base. Some of them are the great grandsons of those first customers, according to Raphael De Anda.

 ”We're very grateful to the community that has accepted us and that has allowed us to continue to serve tacos for all these years,” he said.

Some of the workers at Taqueria Hoy have been with Rafael De Anda for decades.

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That love for their customer base also extends to their workers. Some have been at the taco shop for decades. Raphael De Anda said his father was a father figure to many, including those who crossed the border when they were young. He’d nurture them and help them get settled in the United States.

“He didn't only have two boys. He had many, many children,” Raphael De Anda said.

Lesson No. 3: Trust your kids

Now I love my father, but I cannot imagine working directly alongside him. I'm open and friendly at work, the type of person who would bake cupcakes for my colleagues' kids. My dad, on the other hand, would never hang out with someone outside of the office. Two different generations, two very different upbringings. One was raised in a strict all-boys Catholic school in Sri Lanka, another in an international school in Sharjah, UAE.

But while Rafael De Anda had a very different upbringing to his sons — him in Jalisco, his sons as American-born citizens who went to Chapman University — he's been open to their ideas and approaches.

They have taken to social media, using Instagram to explain how taqueros make carne asada, show off their heart shaped takeout containers for Valentine’s Day, and share collaborative posts with influencers.

“ Their way of approaching the business has been a little switching to the modern culture,” Rafael De Anda said. “I like it, that's something that I would not be able to do, to be honest.”

He adds that he keeps a close eye on what they are doing. “And to be honest, I'm proud of them,” Rafael De Anda said, uttering the magical words every kid wants to hear from their immigrant parents.

Lesson No. 4: Life isn't complicated. We're the ones who complicate it

Raphael De Anda said his father has instilled in his brother and him the importance of focusing on the task at hand rather than worrying too much about the future.

 "Sometimes my brother and I will talk with my Dad. "Hey, what do the projections look like for this year?" he said. "My Dad's like "well, it doesn't really matter. As long as we take care of what we're doing now, things will work out."

And Raphael De Anda said it always does end up working out.

Lesson No. 5: I do what I can with what I am given

Their father was not one to live in the future, and neither did he spend time worrying, his sons said.

"Instead of saying, "Oh, woe is me. I wish I had more customers", Raphael De Anda said, his father would focus on the customers he had.

"How do we treat them the best we can?"

Growth happened organically. Their father found the Santa Ana location through a conversation with a regular customer who was selling his billiards shop.

"The owner said, "We care for you so much and your presence, you've meant so much to the community. We want to offer you to buy the building first," recounted Raphael De Anda.

And he did.

Lesson No. 6: Be honest with yourself before you can be honest with others

The sons grew up hearing their father reiterate the message of staying true and authentic.

" Don't change who you are for others and that mantra is also carried through in everything we do here at the restaurant," said Raphael De Anda.

Birria, for example, is a popular offering at taquerias across Southern California. But, it's not something on offer at Taqueria Hoy.

 "That's not who we are. We have to be honest that we are a taco and burrito makers first," Raphael De Anda said.

And the burritos at Taqueria Hoy are massive.

And for some parting wisdom from Rafael De Anda, "How do you eat a big burrito? One bite at a time."

The World Cup has officially taken over Los Angeles, and not without controversy.

Fans have voiced frustration over ticket pricing and questions linger over whether the Iranian football team should be playing in the tournament.

Listen: Should Iran be playing at SoFi? Listeners weigh in as tentative US-Iran deal is announced

The man at the center of these decisions and how fans in Southern California are experiencing the World Cup is FIFA President Gianni Infantino.

Here's why he's the most influential voice in soccer right now.

How he got elected

The election of Infantino followed one of the worst corruption scandals in sports history. In 2015, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted more than a dozen FIFA officials and executives on charges of bribery, money laundering and wire fraud.

Swiss authorities launched an additional investigation, which led to former FIFA President Sepp Blatter's resignation. He had held the position since 1998.

Following the corruption scandal, Congress passed a reform package, but criticism remains over lack of follow through.

Part of Infantino's success has been built on his ability to boost revenue for FIFA over the years.

Ticket pricing, human rights and other critiques

Getting in on the World Cup games here in L.A. has likely been... expensive.

And that's been one of the biggest critiques of Infantino as matches approached and FIFA announced ticket pricing would adjust based on demand. Infantino has defended the pricing method, comparing it to other major American sporting events.

Coaches, players and fans are also split on FIFA's decision to add three-minute mandated hydration breaks to matches, according to Reuters.

Infantino has also been criticized for downplaying concerns over human rights. For example, the Guardian reported in 2021 that more than 6,500 migrant workers died in Qatar during the 10-year lead up to it hosting the World Cup in 2022.

Oliver Kay, The Athletic's senior soccer writer, said during a conversation on LAist 89.3's AirTalk that Infantino's legacy is complicated and leaves true soccer fans with questions.

" How many of these decisions are being made for the good of the game, and how many of them are being made for whichever world leaders Infantino is cozying up to at that time?" Kay said.