WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump’s Education Department is investigating the University of California at Berkeley for allegedly failing to properly report hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign funding, The Daily Wire has learned.

The Education Department sent a notice of investigation and records requests to UC Berkeley on Friday, senior Education Department officials shared Friday morning. The notification came amid widespread media reports that Berkeley has received a substantial amount of money from foreign governments, the official said, specifically China.

These substantial amounts of money have not been reported to the department as required by law under Section 117’s Foreign Funding Disclosure Requirements for Universities, one official shared. The department is concerned about the university’s deep involvements with Chinese entities, particularly how it has shared the development and transfer of important technologies with China.

“They’ll have 30 days to respond with the records that we requested,” an Education Department official said, “and so we hope to have quite a volume of records and we’ll be able to verify the degree to which UC Berkeley is or is not compliant after our examination of those records.”

Close-up of metalwork on Sather Gate, the iconic entrance gate to the campus of UC Berkeley in downtown Berkeley, California, October 9, 2018. (Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)

“Over the course of the last two years, UC Berkeley has been cooperating with federal inquiries regarding 117 reporting issues, and will continue to do so,” a spokesman for UC Berkeley said on Friday. The univeristy declined to comment further.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth promised an overhaul of military physical fitness standards — and accountability to ensure that those standards are met — in an X post on Friday, declaring that on his watch, service members would be “FIT, not FAT!”

Hegseth was responding to a Military Times report published Thursday revealing that the overwhelming majority — more than two-thirds — of reserve troops did not meet the prescribed weight standards.

“Completely unacceptable. This is what happens when standards are IGNORED — and this is what we are changing. REAL fitness & weight standards are here. We will be FIT, not FAT,” Hegseth declared in an X post, noting that part of the problem was the fact that even the existing standards were not being enforced.

Completely unacceptable.

This is what happens when standards are IGNORED — and this is what we are changing. REAL fitness & weight standards are here.

We will be FIT, not FAT. pic.twitter.com/KWMlFbS1c8

— Pete Hegseth (@PeteHegseth) April 25, 2025

Citing a new study released earlier this week by the American Security Project (ASP), The Military Times reported that an estimated 68% of National Guard and reserve troops would be classified as either overweight or obese. The problem was slightly more pronounced among National Guard members, where some 21% of all personnel are estimated to be obese.

The ASP noted in the study that a large percentage of Active Duty service members are also considered to be overweight or obese. But because National Guard and reserve service members serve and train on a part time basis, enforcing physical fitness standards can be a much more complicated issue than when dealing with those serving in an active duty capacity — but the risks, in addition to the impacts on military readiness, remain high.

“These service members experience heightened risk for a wide variety of serious health conditions, such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, chronic kidney disease, and osteoarthritis, which may lead to life-threatening health events such as stroke and heart failure,” the ASP report stated.

Hegseth has stated repeatedly that his main goal is to restore the United States military’s reputation as the most lethal fighting force on the planet, and as such, he plans to overhaul and enforce fitness standards that will bring about that end.