cannot transform or free transformat all now (its not the legacy issue, although I tried that fix)

I'm trying to ctrl+shift+click and drag the lower middle (non-corner) handle of the bounding box to skew the lower part of a layer slightly. Originally, when I first went looking for a solution to my issue, I was able to free transform and scale just fine, I was just having an issue getting the ctrl+shift+click method to do anything (my cursor changes to the white arrow with the black left/right arrows below it like it should, but nothing happens when I try and drag a handle). And now, during my efforts to troubleshoot the issue, the problem has gotten worse; dragging handles in transform or free transform does nothing at all, and I could do that fine just an hour ago.

I've never posted about a PS issue before, I've never ran into an issue that I've been unable to find a solution to online. I've done my searching and not found a solution that fixes this issue specifically. So far, I've found and tried:

• Checking and un-checking "use legacy transform"
• Un-checking and re-checking "use graphics processor," -as un-checking this was the solution to not being able to open PS after my last update. Also, I saw someone suggest it regarding a transform issue.
• Converting the layer a smart object
• Made sure the layer isn't linked to any other layers, or locked.
• Toggled and un-toggled the reference point.
• Re-setting default preferences on quit
• I also saw someone suggesting to open a new document and dragging the layer into it and trying to  make my adjustment in there, then just dragging the layer back into the original document?

... None of these ideas worked (I think that's all the solutions I tried, I'm not sure... I wasnt planning to post about this, and I've been at trying to solve this for a good while now, and I've read everything on transform issues that I can find, even much older posts).

What's going on here? I've never had an issue in PS (or any other adobe software, for that matter) that I havent been able to find a way to solve it online.

My anticipatory thanks