ios News phantom storage - 2GB grinning at me like the Cheshire cat

No matter what I do, the Apple News app is holding 2.04 GB of Documents and Data, mocking me. Here is what I've done to find it and delete it:

Under 'Following' tab - deleted saved stories, cleared history

Under 'News+' tab - zero downloaded issues of magazines

Under 'Sports' tab - deleted all followed teams

Under 'Audio' - I found 6 podcasts saved under 'What's next'. Deleted them, storage jumped to 2.1 GB

Turned off News in 'Apps using iCloud' on Macbook on same iCloud account - swear to god the app usage on phone jumped to 2.13 GB

Deleted the app, reinstalled it as new, data reappears

Family members also use the family iCloud with separate IDs: is the secret here?

After deleting any data I could find, I refresh, even hard reset, no change

It's not even close to Halloween! Any insight greatly appreciated.

ios 17.3.1 running on 12 Pro Max. Hard reset multiple times.