, even if it’s hardly one they’d have craved.

They even fared better than houses built to similar codes but without the official designation, likely due to the program’s more stringent verification requirements.“It really does start to bring home that there is value for everybody involved,” said Malik. “There’s value for the insurers, there’s value for the homeowner.”

Fortified doesn’t address all types of hurricane losses. Nearly half the claims in the study were from fallen trees, which require separate mitigation strategies.The enhanced standards do add cost: between 0.5% to 3% more for new construction, and 6% to 16% for retrofits. But the longterm benefits have spurred even disaster recovery nonprofits like Habitat for Humanity, Team Rubicon and SBP to use Fortified, often with the philanthropic support of insurers like Travelers and Allstate.“Helping disaster-impacted homeowners build back smarter with storm-resilient construction and IBHS Fortified standards helps break the cycle of disaster and loss,” said Thomas Corley, chief operating officer at the New Orleans-based nonprofit SBP, which has built 671 homes to Fortified standards in nine states.

The potential insurance discounts also help recovering families by lowering their monthly expenses and boosting confidence that they can keep affording their homes. “For low-income families, this could mean the difference between upward mobility or years of financial instability after a disaster,” said Corley.Alabama is expanding its grant program to three new counties this year. Fowler said he hopes the results encourage more insurance companies to offer wind protection on coastal homes, and that adoption will spread to less hurricane-prone areas still susceptible to

The approach has caught the attention of other states seeking resilience solutions. Fowler spoke before a California legislative committee last month in support of the

, a proposed bill that would fund grants for fire-safe roofing and defensible space to protect from wildfires.His administration argues that courts approved then-President Richard Nixon’s emergency use of tariffs in 1971, and that only Congress, and not the courts, can determine the “political” question of whether the president’s rationale for declaring an emergency complies with the law.

Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs shook global financial markets and led many economists to downgrade the outlook for U.S. economic growth. So far, though, the tariffs appear to have hadThe lawsuit was filed by a group of small businesses, including a wine importer, V.O.S. Selections, whose owner has said the tariffs are having a major impact and his company may not survive.

A dozen states also filed suit, led by Oregon. “This ruling reaffirms that our laws matter, and that trade decisions can’t be made on the president’s whim,” Attorney General Dan Rayfield said.Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said the tariffs had “jacked up prices on groceries and cars, threatened shortages of essential goods and wrecked supply chains for American businesses large and small.″