Eeek... yeah it would be nice to have a dedicated widgets restriction. When I installed a restrictions profile on my iPad this morning to test, I blacklisted com.apple.news and disabled "Allow News" and the News app disappears from the widgets list (so it doesn't even appear as an option in the notifications settings b/c it's gone).

It's been about 3-4 hours without a News notification coming through, is this your setup as well? I would think those 2 restrictions would cover anything News related. The only other restriction I see that might come into play is disabling "Show Today view on Lock screen." I'm on the latest iOS 12.2.

Wow, @sshort than you SO MUCH for this!!
I will give it a shot!
Sandy

This seemed to work for awhile but noticed today that news headlines are showing up in the widgets again. Has something changed recently? Is there another com.apple to add to the list?

I plugged my iPad into AC2 and read the console while interacting with news notifications and the widget. com.apple.news came back as the bundle id each time :/ .

Thanks for checking that. After I thought about it the bundle identifier would only block the app. So the Restriction for News is possibly not working?

The News Restriction is working to block News from Siri Search - but widgets are still allowed.

Is there anyway to allow the battery widget? Thank you very much.

Even with News blocked headlines appear in the widget until the device is restarted one time after setup.