By MICHELLE CHAPMAN, AP Business Writer

Home Depot is buying specialty building products distributor GMS for $4.3 billion, the second notable acquisition in a little over a year that emphasizes a deliberate push by the home improvement chain into building and materials supply.

The acquisitions arrive as booming sales from the pandemic fade and Home Depot intensifies its focus on professional builders.

GMS Inc. of Tucker, Georgia, is a distributor of specialty building products like drywall, steel framing and other supplies used in both residential and commercial projects.

A subsidiary of Home Depot’s SRS Distribution Inc., the supply company it bought last year, will start a cash tender offer to buy all outstanding shares of GMS for $110 per share. The total equity value of the transaction is approximately $4.3 billion. The deal is worth about $5.5 billion, including debt.

Home Depot purchased SRS Distribution, a materials provider for professionals, for more than $18 billion including debt. SRS provides materials for professionals like roofers, landscapers and pool contractors.

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“The combination of GMS and SRS will provide the residential and commercial Pro customer with more fulfillment and service options than ever before,” SRS CEO Dan Tinker said in a statement. “Together, we’ll create a network of more than 1,200 locations and a fleet of more than 8,000 trucks capable of making tens of thousands of jobsite deliveries per day.”

Home Depot, based in Atlanta, moved quickly to acquire GMS, putting in its own bid less that two week after the company QXO offered $5 billion, according to a regulatory filing. Billionaire Brad Jacobs is the CEO of QXO, which was created to snap up companies in the building supply sector. In April QXO completed its approximately $11 billion acquisition of Beacon Roofing Supply.

The GMS transaction with Home Depot is expected to close by the end of fiscal 2025. Shares of the GMS jumped nearly 12% at the opening bell. Home Depot shares declined slightly.

By LINLEY SANDERS and AMELIA THOMSON-DEVEAUX

WASHINGTON (AP) — Only 36% of Democrats say they’re “extremely” or “very” proud to be American, according to a new Gallup poll, reflecting a dramatic decline in national pride that’s also clear among young people.

The findings are a stark illustration of how many — but not all — Americans have felt less of a sense of pride in their country over the past decade. The split between Democrats and Republicans, at 56 percentage points, is at its widest since 2001. That includes all four years of Republican President Donald Trump’s first term.

Only about 4 in 10 U.S. adults who are part of Generation Z, which is defined as those born from 1997 to 2012, expressed a high level of pride in being American in Gallup surveys conducted in the past five years, on average. That’s compared with about 6 in 10 Millennials — those born between 1980 and 1996 — and at least 7 in 10 U.S. adults in older generations.

“Each generation is less patriotic than the prior generation, and Gen Z is definitely much lower than anybody else,” said Jeffrey Jones, a senior editor at Gallup. “But even among the older generations, we see that they’re less patriotic than the ones before them, and they’ve become less patriotic over time. That’s primarily driven by Democrats within those generations.”

A slow erosion in national pride

America’s decline in national pride has been a slow erosion, with a steady downtick in Gallup’s data since January 2001, when the question was first asked.

Even during the tumultuous early years of the Iraq War, the vast majority of U.S. adults, whether Republican or Democrat, said they were “extremely” or “very” proud to be American. At that point, about 9 in 10 were “extremely” or “very” proud to be American. That remained high in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, but the consensus around American pride slipped in the years that followed, dropping to about 8 in 10 in 2006 and continuing a gradual decline.

Now, 58% of U.S. adults say that, in a downward shift that’s been driven almost entirely by Democrats and independents. The vast majority of Republicans continue to say they’re proud to be American.

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Independents’ pride in their national identity hit a new low in the most recent survey, at 53%, largely following that pattern of gradual decline.

Democrats’ diminished pride in being American is more clearly linked to Trump’s time in office. When Trump first entered the White House, in 2017, about two-thirds of Democrats said they were proud to be American. That had fallen to 42% by 2020, just before Trump lost reelection to Democrat Joe Biden.

But while Democrats’ sense of national pride rebounded when Biden took office, it didn’t go back to its pre-Trump levels.

“It’s not just a Trump story,” Jones said. “Something else is going on, and I think it’s just younger generations coming in and not being as patriotic as older people.”

Republicans and Democrats split on patriotism

Other recent polling shows that Democrats and independents are less likely than Republicans to say that expressing patriotism is important or to feel a sense of pride in their national leaders.

Nearly 9 in 10 Republicans in a 2024 SSRS poll said they believed patriotism has a positive impact on the United States, with Democrats more divided: 45% said patriotism had a positive impact on the country, while 37% said it was negative.

But a more general sense of discontent was clear on both sides of the aisle earlier this year, when a CNN/SSRS poll found that fewer than 1 in 10 Democrats and Republicans said “proud” described the way they felt about politics in America today.

In that survey, most Americans across the political spectrum said they were “disappointed” or “frustrated” with the country’s politics.

By COLLIN BINKLEY, AP Education Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — Harvard University failed to protect Jewish students from harassment, the Trump administration concluded after an investigation, threatening to cut all federal funding from the Ivy League school if it fails to take action.

A federal task force sent a letter to Harvard on Monday finding the university violated civil rights laws requiring colleges to protect students from discrimination based on race or national origin. It says investigators found Harvard was at times a “willful participant in anti-Semitic harassment of Jewish students, faculty, and staff” and that campus leaders allowed antisemitism to fester on the campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

“Failure to institute adequate changes immediately will result in the loss of all federal financial resources and continue to affect Harvard’s relationship with the federal government,” officials said in the letter, which was obtained by The Associated Press and first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

Harvard did not immediately comment.

It’s the latest intensification in the White House’s battle with Harvard, which lost more than $2.6 billion in federal research grants after rejecting a list of federal demands calling for sweeping changes to campus governance, hiring and admissions.

The Trump administration for months has accused Harvard of tolerating antisemitism on its campus, but a formal finding paves the way for a negotiated agreement or — if one isn’t reached — an attempt to cut the school off from federal dollars.

Much of the investigation’s evidence focuses on campus protests over the Israel-Hamas war. It says the campus was “overrun by an impermissible, multiweek encampment” that left Jewish and Israeli students fearful and disrupted their studies.

It accuses Harvard of imposing lax and inconsistent discipline against students who participated in the encampment, noting that none was suspended.

Harvard President Alan Garber has acknowledged problems with antisemitism and anti-Muslim bias on campus, but he says Harvard has made strides to fight prejudice. He announced new initiatives in April after Harvard released internal reports finding evidence of antisemitism and Islamophobia on campus.

“Harvard cannot — and will not — abide bigotry,” Garber wrote in releasing the reports.

The Monday letter finds that Harvard violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Such findings have almost always been resolved through voluntary resolutions between schools and the federal government. The Trump administration has taken a much sharper edge than its predecessors, however.

It has been decades since an administration even attempted to fully strip a school or college of its federal funding over civil rights violations.

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

By STAN CHOE, AP Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are adding to their records on Monday as Wall Street nears the finish of a second straight winning month.

The S&P 500 was 0.2% higher in early trading, its first trading after completing its stunning rebound from a springtime sell-off of roughly 20%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 142 points, or 0.3%, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.2% higher.

Stocks got a boost after Canada said it’s rescinding a planned tax on U.S. technology firms and resuming talks on trade with the United States. On Friday, U.S. President Donald Trump had said he was suspending talks with Canada because of his anger with the tax, which he called “a direct and blatant attack on our country.”

One of the main reasons U.S. stocks came back so quickly from its springtime swoon has been hope that Trump will reach deals with other countries to lower his stiff proposed tariffs. Otherwise, the fear is that the trade wars could stifle the economy and send inflation higher.

The United States is charging a 10% baseline tax on all imported goods, along with higher rates for Chinese goods and other import taxes on steel and autos. But many of Trump’s additional, announced tariffs are currently on pause. They’re scheduled to kick back into effect in a little more than a week.

In an interview with Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” Trump said his administration will notify countries that the trade penalties will take effect unless there are deals with the United States. Letters will start going out “pretty soon” before the approaching deadline, he said.

On Wall Street, GMS’ stock jumped 11.3% after the supplier of specialty building products said it agreed to sell itself to a Home Depot subsidiary in a deal that would pay $110.00 per share in cash. That would give it a total value of roughly $5.5 billion, including debt.

Less than two weeks ago, another company, QXO, said it was offering to buy GMS for $95.20 per share in cash. After the announcement of the Home Depot bid, QXO’s stock rose 2%, and Home Depot’s stock was flat.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise rallied 12% and Juniper Networks climbed 8.4% after saying they had reached an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice that could clear the way for their merger go through, subject to court approval. HPE is trying to buy Juniper in a $14 billion deal.

In the bond market, Treasury yields were easing a bit ahead of some major economic reports later in the week. The highlight will be Thursday’s jobs report. It’s often the most anticipated economic data of each month, and it will come a day earlier than usual this upcoming month because of the Fourth of July holiday.

The job market has remained relatively steady recently, even in the face of tariffs, but hiring has slowed. Economists expect Thursday’s data to show another slowdown in overall hiring, down to 115,000 jobs in June from 139,000 in May.

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Such data has kept the Federal Reserve on hold this year when it comes to interest rates. Fed Chair Jerome Powell has said repeatedly that it’s waiting for more data to show how tariffs will affect the economy and inflation before resuming its cuts to interest rates. That’s because lower rates can fan inflation higher, along with giving the economy a boost.

Trump, meanwhile, has been pushing for more cuts to rates and for them to happen soon. Two of his appointees to the Fed have said recently they could consider cutting rates as soon as the Fed’s next meeting in less than a month.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury eased to 4.26% from 4.29% late Friday.

In stock markets abroad, indexes dipped modestly in Europe following a more mixed finish in Asia.

Stocks fell 0.9% in Hong Kong but rose 0.6% in Shanghai after China reported its factory activity improved slightly in June after Beijing and Washington agreed in May to postpone imposing higher tariffs on each others’ exports, though manufacturing remained in contraction.

AP Business Writer Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.