A big motivation for the Trump administration seems to be the politicization that happened under the Biden regime. There were many large NSF grants given to fun

A big motivation for the Trump administration seems to be the politicization that happened under the Biden regime. There were many large NSF grants given to fund "education" and they were pretty much focused on people with the preferred racial and gender status. These were also substantial grants that were often 3-10 times bigger than the regular grants given to regular scientists. This created much jealousy as well as other practical problems. The Science article suggests that there's danger of politicization, but that has been the case for many years.