Reason.com clearly follows an agenda (it's no secret) and will jump at any occasion to highlight any type of government spending that seem (and sometimes actually is) wasted. They do this so they can advocate for tax cuts.
And they are right this time.
The reason the SLS was built by NASA is clearly political, this is not even a controversial point. It does cost a lot of money, which is not controversial either.
Were the money wasted? Not sure, there's always some kind of silver lining. But i for sure would have liked them to use SpaceX, which would have costed perhaps 10% of those money, and use the remaining 90% to actually perform research on things like new propulsion systems, or the actual sustainability of human life on Mars.