How do news companies find out that the government plans to pass a law in a couple of years, or that the president is about to sign an executive order?
Do they contact the government workers and ask to be notified of any news that the government has? If so what are the requirements to be signed up -- is this something I can do? If there is a different method used, what is it?
The incumbent White House Press Secretary (a senior White House official whose primary responsibility is to act as spokesperson for the executive branch of the United States government administration) is Sarah Huckabee Sanders. She is the single designated staff person or office responsible for managing the relationship between the president and journalists / media entities.
One of her roles is to field questions from the White House press corps, which is a group of journalists, correspondents, or members of the media usually stationed at the White House in Washington, D.C., to cover the President of the United States, White House events, and news briefings. A partial list (I can't vouch for the accuracy of this) may be obtained from the White House Press Corps page on Wikipedia.
This information suggests several routes to make your way towards the information you require:
I would suggest that the only way that a journalist is going to get the news you refer to in advance is to build up a network of contacts in and around the people responsible for these decisions. There doesn't seem to be a shortcut to this.
Good luck going forward.
