[snake42]

Mire things down in bureaucracy. Try and make everything take substantially longer than it should. Throw up hurdles in the face of progress. "Forget" to do important steps in the process so that you have to re-do work. Implement things on the face of it that are correct, but that don't achieve the same result, etc.

[SpicyLemonZest]

If having the NSF offer fewer grants is the administration's goal, as it seems to be, wouldn't this help them along?