I adopted a baby. I wanted a highway, but it was a lot of red tape.

This is a pun built on the verb “adopt.” In everyday usage, to adopt a baby is to take legal responsibility for a child; in civic language, to “adopt” a highway is to sponsor its upkeep (as in roadside litter programs). The speaker sets up the first meaning, then flips to the second, using “red tape” both literally (bureaucratic paperwork) and as an ironic echo of the “tape” used to mark off public works. The joke hinges on the mismatch between a personal, intimate act and a bureaucratic, infrastructural one, satirizing how administrative process can overwhelm intentions.