> But arbitrary cancellations and delayed disbursements are unprecedented

Is it though? I would like to see more evidence. The scale of the cuts is clearly larger than what we have experienced in recent history, but this has always been a struggle. Researchers have spent an inordinate amount of time shopping projects around and writing grant proposals for a long time now.

> And justifying them on the basis of politics—prohibiting, for instance, grants that include language referencing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI)—was unheard of until now.

This is disingenuous. While this new policy is clearly an overcorrection, previous policies which mandated that language clearly existed -- the political overlap is not unheard of.

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It is hard to follow the point of the article. It appears to mostly be opposed to funding cuts. Obviously the current administration is cutting the grant budgets of these organizations. But that article seems to be making the claim that the method of selecting what to cut is being done in a particular "anti-science" manner.

Given that there are cuts, are they doing a particularly bad job of choosing which projects to cut? I don't see an answer to that question in any rigorous way, just insinuations.