A group of Microsoft Products and technologies used for sharing and managing content, knowledge, and applications.
I create a new site for test, but I can't repro the issue by my side so I have several questions to know your condition better.
Sorry, but I don't believe you. Same problem here - sometimes we get the republish button sometimes not. It's hard to figure out under what circumstances it disappears. Pretty sure this has changed over the last few weeks so could Msft confirm exactly what's supposed to happen when a news post is in edit mode? Also provide step by step with screenshots.