FIFA President Gianni Infantino is abandoning his divisive plan to sell World Cup profits to private equity after receiving pushback from all corners of the soccer world.

“We’ve seen them overplaying their hand,” the sociologist Brooke Harrington says. “They’re pillaging American cultural institutions. They’re pillaging democracy.”

He said that the values enshrined in the 1776 Declaration of Independence have “fallen out of favor” among Americans.