How about a reframe: When they are the ones in power, cutting funding to organizations that support their political opponents and goals they don't support.

I'll be the first to say this is a bad thing AND that they're going about it stupidly. But I'm also saying that this is an inevitable consequence of the failure to manage your stakeholders over a period of decades.

Better framing indeed, I agree. Not sure this was a predictable outcome though, the sheer stupidity of defunding existing science projects based on politics is mind boggling. How do you hedge against capricious self sabotage like this?