The Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) announced it was making nearly $1bn available to states to protect themselves from natural disasters, such as floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, and fires, as well as terrorist attacks and cyber disruptions.

This $1bn allocation, which will apply to 15 different grant programmes, is part of the “Notices of Funding Opportunity amounting to more than $2.2 billion available to state, local, tribal and territorial governments to help them protect American citizens”, Fema states on its website.

However, Reuters reported at least $1.9bn of this funding was conditional on states following Department of Homeland Security conditions laid out in April, saying states will not cut “commercial relations specifically with Israeli companies or companies doing business in or with Israel” to qualify, according to 11 agency grant notices it reviewed.

But the ruling is seen as largely symbolic. More than 30 US states already have laws that require “public entities to certify they do not and will not boycott Israel”, according to an essay titled “Anti-BDS laws and the politics of political boycotts” in the University of Pennsylvania’s Journal of Law and Social Change.

In recent months, calls for boycotts of Israeli and international companies that are doing business with Israel have increased. Recently, UN special rapporteur on Palestine Francesca Albanese called for action after publishing a scathing report in which she names over 60 companies, including major technology firms like Google, Amazon and Microsoft, alleging their involvement in what she calls “the transformation of Israel’s economy of occupation to an economy of genocide”.

Albanese was sanctioned by the US after she published the report.

It is the latest escalation of the Trump administration creating pushback on institutions, departments or states that do not fall in line with its goals and priorities, such as its hardline approach to immigration or issues such as climate change.

For example, Fema’s statement laid out that recipients will no longer be able to spend the funds “to house illegal immigrants at luxury hotels, fund climate change pet projects or empower radical organizations with unseemly ties that don’t serve the interest of the American people”.

The statement also added that recipients are required to spend at least 10 percent on “supporting border crisis response and enforcement”.

Johnson visited Ariel city, the fourth-largest illegal Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank, according to Marc Zell, chairman of Republicans Overseas Israel.

“Speaker Mike Johnson says that the mountains of Judea and Samaria are the rightful property of the Jewish People,” he wrote on X alongside a photo of Johnson as he speaks at an event in the occupied territories.

Johnson and his delegation also intend to travel to Gaza and tour controversial aid centers of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), backed by the US and Israel, Israeli officials told Axios.

Access to food, water, and medical supplies remains severely limited in the Gaza Strip due to an ongoing Israeli blockade and poor distribution of aid by the GHF.

Johnson and his delegation will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog as part of an “unusually long” eight-day visit ending on Aug. 10.

The trip was arranged by Heather Johnston, who founded the US Israel Education Association, a conservative pro-Israeli advocacy organization, three Israeli officials informed Axios.

Israeli sources told the media site that the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC, learned of the visit unexpectedly and played no role in organizing it. The Israeli Foreign Ministry and the US Embassy in Jerusalem were similarly uninvolved in preparations.

The unannounced Republican delegation became public knowledge only after Israeli ministers released statements about their meetings with the group.

Johnson arrived on Sunday, accompanied by Reps. Michael McCaul, Nathaniel Moran, Michael Cloud, and Claudia Tenney. Tenney chairs the Friends of Judea and Samaria caucus in the US Congress, which advocates for illegal Israeli settlements.

Since the start of Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip in October 2023, over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 7,000 injured in the West Bank by Israeli forces and illegal settlers, according to the ministry.

In an advisory opinion last July, the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory illegal and called for the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.