Hey y'all! Just wanted to post a quick update that it seems like there was an update between my original post and now that fixed whatever was causing NPM to not work properly (I'm on MacOS Tahoe 26.3.1a)! It takes a while for it to get everything going, but it works, and that's what's most important!
EDIT: NPM commands install, run dev, and run build work! Trying to update NPM via the terminal doesn't work because of how MacOS handles permissions (it's very weird)