Wait, they were fired for showing a grant application to a collaborator? This is something that happens all the time in academia - it's completely normal, regardless of what the rules state (assuming it's their own proposal, which is unclear from the article - as are all these vague accusations). Emory recently fired two tenured Chinese scientists, who are actually quite important in researching Huntington's disease, on similar accusations of hiding their collaborators. The thing is, in the Emory case, the accusations are patently absurd. The collaborators were listed on the papers, and a dean at Emory had approved the collaboration. It looks like the Trump administration is pressuring the NIH, which is pressuring universities, and the people at the bottom are taking the flak.