You are fundamentally misunderstanding the balance of power here.
In your mind it seems to be "those people come pleading for money so they can do research, giving it is essentially charity"- but it couldn't be further from the truth.
Most top-tier researchers can do their science anywhere. If you don't make stuff easy and comfortable enough to hold them, they'll just leave the country. A significant chunk of science spending is an attempt to bribe researchers to stay. Drop that and other countries are going to get those invaluable people.
I can tell you that several major EU universities have started massive outreach programs and are starting to snatch all the top researchers from the US. The damage this will cause to the US' scientific leadership is not even quantifiable, it's completely insane.
Shooting your own foot because you "don't trust bureaucrats". Oh well.
Anyway, at my university the first few top researchers already arrived, this is going to be exciting in european research. If you guys don't want this massive advantage, we'll gladly take it.
Please stop correcting them, maybe then all my friends will come back and do research here instead of in the US.
One of my friends, who is a tenured professor in a top 10 US university, already switched our Signal messages to expire after 24h the other day. I asked him why, and he said "you never know what the current administration might use against you".
So yes, I'm all for having our people back if the US voted that they don't want them.
It is not charity for the researchers. That's money earned. It's charity for the bureaucrats who administer it. As for the facilities and administration it pays for, I take no issue with the facilities. I want to take an axe to the useless bureaucrats and lawyers involved. My dad is a university researcher and he faces endless bureaucratic nonsense to run his lab. If we want to keep researchers here we should start by making it easy for them. It's a cost savings too.