NSF awards in general are public information, so you can look up any award you'd like to see how and why they were approved. The first (https://www.nsf.gov/awa

NSF awards in general are public information, so you can look up any award you'd like to see how and why they were approved. The first (https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award?AWD_ID=2116118 https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award?AWD_ID=2116118) and third (https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award/?AWD_ID=2144506 https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award/?AWD_ID=2144506) were approved as part of the NSF's Directorate of STEM Education, a still-ongoing initiative to ensure the US has a strong talent pipeline of upcoming scientists. It was and remains common for them to toss money at people with kids who otherwise might not be educated well in science; recent Trump-era grants include "Social Mobility through ARkansas Tech program" (https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award?AWD_ID=2527972 https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award?AWD_ID=2527972) and "STEM Journeys - From College to Career" (https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award?AWD_ID=2527683 https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award?AWD_ID=2527683). (I suspect we'll agree that the original examples are framed with strange racial overtones, which you could imagine legitimate political guardrails against even if the peer reviewers don't mind.) The second (https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award/?AWD_ID=2128991 https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award/?AWD_ID=2128991) is core social science research. Virtual meetings had recently become an extremely common phenomenon, and the investigators claim this led them to discovering (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1089/cyber.2021.0112 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1089/cyber.2021.011...) the mechanism behind the then-novel phenomenon of Zoom fatigue.