The article itself even says here:
> [...] the US government has cut scientific grants to academics working on diversity-related topics, halted biomedical grants to international partners, and demanded universities shut down academic units that “belittle” conservative ideas [...]
I'd say it's fair to question if taxpayers should be paying for "diversity related projects." The "belittle conservative ideas" thing is problematic, as that is totally subjective. However, I don't think anyone can say in good faith that most universities aren't incredibly bias. Having been in one circa 2020, it was not a welcoming place if you weren't firmly liberal/progressive. Of course I have to place my disclaimer that I'm not a fan of what Trump is doing, or the man himself for that matter.
Conservatives in the past have also tried to belittle research grants to justify eliminating them, such as "studying X about fruit flies." It might sound silly to a lay person but drosophila is an incredibly important model organism from which many discoveries have come.
The problem is a highly political, often careless or incompetent, and sometimes blatantly corrupt administration taking a sledgehammer instead of a scalpel to so-called "waste."
[1] https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2019...
Do you have a source for this? How can you prove it was simply because it was "diversity related" and not because it someone, somewhere determined the budget needed to be cut because the spending was wasteful?
As far as I can tell, the budget never passed, so we have no way to know one way or another the effects.
I have never seen a government entity claim that cutting their budget wouldn't be catastrophic.