The State of Pennsylvania received its largest federal grant ever for an individual transportation project: $500 million through President Joe Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure law to replace the I-83 bridge in Harrisburg, the state capital.
In July 2024, Governor Josh Shapiro and U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg announced that the construction for the new bridge (with five lanes going in each direction) was expected to begin in 2026 and would take two to three years to complete.
This week, Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) — who voted against Biden’s infrastructure law — spoke with President Donald Trump‘s new Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy and said that while he knows the project is currently “under a DOT review,” he asked Duffy for a project timeline, “because there’s a lot of work being done out there, on the approaches, and we want to make sure that there’s going to be a bridge connected to those approaches.”
Unbelievable. @SecDuffy just confirmed the I-83 bridge project in our district got held up by the Biden DOT – more focused on DEI and climate nonsense than building the bridge. pic.twitter.com/Ca6R9Q89wM
— Rep. Scott Perry (@RepScottPerry) July 16, 2025
Duffy, who was also named acting administration of NASA this month, replied: “We are working as quickly as possible” and added, “We are pulling out a lot of the green and social justice out of the NOFOs that were required by the last administration that the Congress did not require, so that is taking us a little bit of time.”
Duffy’s answer asserts that delays are being caused by the painstaking removal of the Biden-era “woke” requirements, which the Trump administration has deemed a priority.
[NOTE: NOFO is a Notice of Funding Opportunity written by government agencies to announce the availability of grant funding. In May, announcing available funds for public transit, DOT wrote that its “Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) strips DEI requirements related to climate change, sustainability, environmental justice, and diversity, equity and inclusion.” Duffy said: “American commuters don’t want to pay for deranged, leftist DEI mandates that don’t improve the efficiency of their daily commutes….At FTA, we stripped the unnecessary and wasteful woke requirements our transit manufacturing system was burdened by under the last administration.”]
Perry reported on X that the bridge project “got held up by the Biden DOT.” Perry wrote: “Unbelievable. @SecDuffy just confirmed the I-83 bridge project in our district got held up by the Biden DOT – more focused on DEI and climate nonsense than building the bridge.”
[Note: It’s not clear how much of the purported delay is due to the original inclusion of those “woke” considerations versus how much is attributable to Duffy’s time spent removing them. It’s also unclear, with the project slated to start in 2026, whether there are significant delays to be addressed.]
Yes it was under Bidens infrastructure bill. https://t.co/Kocq1dAwz6
— Choaney (@Chauncy07046664) July 16, 2025