UCLA has a $10B endowment. I find it bollocks that they and these other academic institutions can't just dip into that for their researchers to (hopefully) ride out the current funding situation at a minimum.
It's not bollocks, the endowments are contributions that have constraints on their spending. They cannot legally redirect much of the endowment towards these researchers in the way you want. Instead, they use the endowment as an investment that produces interest which is spent on operating expenses.