Yeah unfortunately a lot of this research was performed or funded by the dept of energy which currently doesn't exist anymore. Luckily though since these types of patents generate a good amount of money I haven't really seen as much a of significant scale back in it from universities like some other fields, at least from people I know who do this sort of work. They are mostly keeping all the people doing it on and just scaling back on new equipment and buildings and things like that. Talking with people they are mostly just biding their time until the next election as most of this was done as executive orders so it can be undone the same way even if it takes years to rebuild. It does just suck that one of the two major political parties decided to make anti-intelligence and anti-science their main personality though it remains to be seen whether it stays that way once their dear leader is gone from power and given his health hopefully gone from the living world.