The first scenario is due to anti-trust complaints forcing Apple to treat their pre-installed apps identically to third-party ones. (Also why you can "delete" system apps.)
If that was completely true I would have deleted the News app long ago. Maybe for weather apps but there's still some selective enablement by Apple on this front.
You can delete the News app, give it a try.
On iOS yes, on MacOS (26) it won't let me. I've not tried 27 yet. There's no option to 'move to bin' or delete, and dragging to the recycling bin does nothing. Same with most of the other supplied Apple Apps on MacOS.