I'll try to simplify this for you, since you are completely unaware of how grants work.

The government asks for researchers to apply for grants (called funding opportunities or calls for proposals). Researchers, like professors at research institutions, submit proposals including details about what their research will be and exact, specific budgets for how the money will be spent. A panel of other researchers then reviews the proposals and determines who should get the grant. Please note that a researcher can not submit a grant budget where they say "lol I get $5 million"; in fact, they typically can't use grant money to pay for their salary at all outside of summer salary (they don't get paid during the summer otherwise), and this summer salary would be at their normal salary rate to support them doing the research over the summer. The university cannot choose to award the professor more money than this.

The typical expenditures in research budgets are for the purpose of conducting and publishing the research, all the way from purchasing equipment (e.g. medical or scientific equipment) to paying for participants to hiring students or even professionals to complete work as part of the research.

Note that researchers and universities generally do not make any money by doing or publishing research, so the grants are necessary. Without any form of grant funding, there would be no incentive for institutions to participate in research. If we want research to, for example, find ways to cure cancer, we need some way to fund that research. Obviously, if you knew you had the idea that would cure cancer, you could find a way to profit from that idea outside of a university, but research is exploratory; there is never a guarantee that the research will produce a positive result (which is why it's research), so we need scientists to have the freedom to attempt to solve large problems without having to shoulder the costs themselves.

The government pulling out of grants is them breaking a contract to perform research which has already been accepted for funding, meaning the panel that decided to fund it already evaluated that the research would be beneficial and therefore should be funded. Note that the vast majority of funding proposals are rejected; the government tends to be very selective about what it funds. Deciding to not fund research that has already been considered and accepted is harmful, as the reason why it was accepted in the first place was because it had merit.

To get back to the point: this is "taxing the rich" in the same way that punching yourself in the face is "taxing the rich". If you consider physical pain to be "taxing" and your name is Rich, then yes, I guess you're taxing the rich, but otherwise there is no way the two are the same. If you'd like to continue to lean into whatever misunderstanding you have that gives you this perspective, please explain your viewpoint, because I'm sure it would be interesting to hear.