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Recently I have read a lot of news stories saying that President Trump is working on a religious freedom law which could allow doctors to refuse to do abortions or treat transgender patients.

However, I can’t seem to find the name of this bill/proposed bill, any actual quotes from it, or any recent quotes from President Trump about this topic.

How can I find first-hand information like this?

Edit: One article talking about the topic is “Trump Gives Health Workers New Religious Liberty Protections,” posted yesterday by the New York Times.

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    Looks like it's all hot air for now.
    – Denis de Bernardy
    Commented Jan 19, 2018 at 13:40
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    Note that when someone says they are "working on a bill" said "bill" might be nothing yet but a word document on their team's private network share.
    – Philipp ♦
    Commented Jan 19, 2018 at 14:24
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    @Philipp - or that they held a meeting to discuss establishing a committee to appoint a working group. No i'm not bitter after a workday full of meetings, why did you ask?
    – user4012
    Commented Jan 19, 2018 at 14:45
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    Could you show some of these articles? Keep in mind, most reputable news sources will link to the bill somewhere in the article (or a source article that they based their info off of). If they do not have these, then chances are it's not a very reliable source.
    – hszmv
    Commented Jan 19, 2018 at 16:51
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    @Ben Voigt What question? My question? I’m not trying to be misleading or make anything incendiary; I’m just looking for more information... Who is making things incendiary? :(
    – Taylor
    Commented Jan 22, 2018 at 16:01

2 Answers 2

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The Library of Congress has an excellent resource to do just that.

For your specific question, searching “religious freedom” in the Search Box will give you the bill you’re looking for: S. 1114 (the second result on the page).

Note that Trump can also govern via Executive Orders — which is what happened in this case. These won’t be covered by the Library of Congress website.

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  • +1 for excellent quality of answer. -1 because the bill you found seems to be 100% opposite of what the OP asked (It's Feinstein's bill to counter Trump, not Trump's notional bill :)
    – user4012
    Commented Jan 19, 2018 at 14:46
  • I don’t think this is quite the right bill. S. 1114 attempts to nullify an executive order Trump made in May of 2017. I’m looking for the bill mentioned in an article the New York Times published yesterday. The article is called, “Trump Gives Health Workers New Religious Liberty Protections”.
    – Taylor
    Commented Jan 19, 2018 at 14:54
  • Yep, my bad, I just skimmed the Bill’s Summary :)
    – Brandon Bradley
    Commented Jan 19, 2018 at 14:59
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    THe President cannot govern via executive order, at least not legally. Executive orders are only to point law enforcement at existing laws. Granted, there are many examples in the previous administrations where law has been created by executive order, but not within the spirit, or law of the Constitution
    – Frank Cedeno
    Commented Jan 19, 2018 at 16:34
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    @FrankCedeno sorta, but when congress writes more than a few laws with something like "... and that agency will be empowered to make and enforce rules to that effect" in it chances are an executive order can do something similar to anything the president wants.
    – user9389
    Commented Jan 20, 2018 at 0:49
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The president has no official role in legislation, other than signing or vetoing bills. For proposed legislation to be a "bill", it has to be proposed by members of congress, which is generally done through committees. The president can make suggestions to congress as to what bills to introduce, but that does not carry any official legal weight. So if Trump is "working" on a bill, there is no official bill, and thus no official bill name, until congress acts. Until that happens, there will be no official records, and this comes down to how to search for any other alleged plans of Trump: perhaps he's tweeted about, maybe he's mentioned it in a speech, maybe he's brought it up in a meeting.

An executive order would be a different matter.

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