With this, I guess the US will end up as a third rate country much quicker.

If you are politically connected, or stay in an narrow lane of approved work, you get your grant. But if you stray from the politically approved path, or appear disloyal to our First Citizen and the Party, then your grant will be canceled.

The remaining supporters of the incumbent party like to claim that they aren't actually doing anything worse than in the past, and if anything they are just cracking down on things that they see as subjectively bad, so it's fine. And there's an element of truth in that: so much of American policy for a long time has been subject to agency interpretation and judicial review, and there was always room for political maneuvering and corruption in the system. Where the truth becomes a lie is the omission that this is the systematic ramping up from something that happens occasionally in a mostly-functioning system, to something that happens constantly and is systematically designed to facilitate corruption and politicization.

it will take longer than this decade, maybe even next, to restore the brain loss and faith in secure jobs for research

basically this country will just become a highway of non-stop warehouses, alternating ICE prisons vs "AI" datacenters

science, medicine, all research and development just gone to other countries

The amount of capability that America is burning is impressive. Since its not part of everyone else's life, it looks like it has no impact.

The same way that a drug discovery today has no impact on your life now, but is life saving 10 years down the line.

This is not just picking which ideas the government supports. This sounds like it’s taking all the “fun” out of having grant funding.

Sure, that’s a flip remark, but doesn’t this have a similar sense of arguments against other government funded programs?

~SNAP food assistance is raising food prices~ or ~SNAP food assistance is my tax dollars going towards anyone who says they’re hungry and don’t want to work~