Sean Duffy spends Newsom over $21M budget on 101 Freeway wildlife crossing

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy hit out at Gov. Democratic California Rep. Gavin Newsom over an unfinished wildlife crossing bridge in the Golden State that is running $21 million over budget.

Duffy shared a post from X’s account End Wokeness showing a video of an unfinished project spanning 10 lanes of the 101 Freeway in Southern California. The video shows the incomplete bridge, which is meant to provide a safe way for animals like cougars to cross the highway.

“Bridges go nowhere. Trains go nowhere. Leave us the building @GavinNewsom,” Duffy wrote on X.

Construction of the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing (WAWC) was supposed to be completed by 2025, with a total project cost of $92 million. That cost estimate increased to $114 million. A press release from the governor’s office says the project should be completed by the fall of 2026.

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At an event held in April 2022, Newsom pledged $54 million in federal funding to build the crossing and later added another $10 million. However, in February, the California Transportation Commission announced that it would release an additional $18.8 million to complete construction.

Wallis Annenberg and the Annenberg Foundation, the bridge’s namesake, have given $25 million to build it by 2021. Beth Pratt, director of the National Wildlife Federation and part of the leadership team overseeing the project, says the delay in the construction of the project is caused by the rising costs in a video sent to X.

Pratt said in a statement to Fox News Digital that the crossing project “experienced significant cost increases” related to “prices, inflation and other factors” that caused construction delays.

Sean Duffy, US Secretary of Transportation, arrives at BlackRock’s 2026 Infrastructure Summit in Washington, DC, on March 11, 2026. (Daniel Heuer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

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He added that these increased costs were in line with other construction projects, citing the FHWA National Highway Construction Cost Index, which shows that highway construction costs have increased by 67% since 2021. Pratt said the project team took cost-cutting measures as part of a “rigorous redesign process” funded by private donations, not public funds.

Newsom’s press office dismissed criticism of the ballooning cost of the project, and pointed to prices from the Trump administration as the cause.

“The cost estimate held until last year when inflation – driven in part by TRUMP’s TARIFFS – increased construction costs. The increase is much LOWER than the national average increase of 67% in highway construction costs,” Newsom’s team wrote in X.

The governor also attributed the delay to “bad weather.”

“Timeline changed by just ONE YEAR due to bad weather last year – five years of working away from the ‘boondoggle,'” Newsom’s press office wrote on X.

California Governor Gavin Newsom speaks during the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing Celebration on April 22, 2022 in Agoura Hills, California. (Jon Kopaloff / Getty Images)

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The increased focus on wildlife bridge construction comes as the state continues to scrutinize other failed projects. Last year, the Department of Transportation canceled $4 billion in federal funding after the state spent $15 billion on high-speed rail projects despite never having a single track.

Newsom, who will run for president in 2028, also faces an estimated $2.9 billion budget deficit for the 2026-2027 fiscal year.