The proposed legislation was originally reported by Bloomberg this way (original article quoted by Nick Heer):

Apple Inc. would be prohibited from pre-installing its own apps on Apple devices under antitrust reform legislation introduced last week, said Democratic Representative David Cicilline, who is leading a push to pass new regulations for U.S. technology companies.

After some back and forth with the bill’s sponsor, Democratic Representative David Cicilline, the Bloomberg article was changed to:

Cicilline told reporters Wednesday that a proposal prohibiting tech platforms from giving an advantage to their own products over those of competitors would mean Apple must let consumers decide which apps to use or remove.

That’s certainly a very different read.

So what does the proposed bill actually say? Here’s a link to a photo of the relevant language. Go ahead read it, it’s not long. But in my reading, it is vague and it is not hard to come up with some pretty significant implications. Like the originally take above, where Apple is banned from pre-installing its own apps (see Benedict Evans’ take).

At the very least, it’d be worth cleaning up the bill’s language to make the intent clear, remove any ambiguity. Then the premise can be debated on its intended merits. But a reminder, the phone part of your iPhone is an app from Apple. Gonna force Apple to make that removable?