If you want to print color photos or documents without much effort, with no tracking, and for a reasonable cost, then yeah... you're pretty much fucked.

But if you just need black and white documents or don't mind a tech project, should still be safe if you go with:

• monochrome (black and white) printers ( even color laser printers are not safe(eff.org))
• an old monchrome dot-matrix printer (note: i've heard that these are actually pretty hard to find these days and they are fairly expensive when you do find them. and for any that are wondering, YES, there were dotmatrix printers that could print color(github.com) but I assume that you still had tracking patterns even back then). You could build(instructables.com) your own(github.com) tho... both projects require an arduino and at least moderate tech skills.
• build your own open-source inkjet printer(hackaday.io) (note: this will be quite a bit more expensive than simply buying an off-the-shelf, spyware-laden printer... and require some tech skills. as they say "freedom isn't free" and "if it was easy, everybody'd be doing it"). there was another project on thingiverse(thingiverse.com) too but it seems to require a no-longer-available kit and an out-of-print book that I couldn't even find pirated copies for (possible that it might exist somewhere on some private tracker or usenet but that's beyond me)... and anyway, that one did not seem to have any open-source code.
• open source printing press(openpressproject.com) (again - very much NOT a cheap or easy option).

I have to put PDF's on a USB drive to print them at this point because the drivers don't work on my machine

Something something Linux.

I made sure the drivers were well known to work before getting the laser printer I got

I was just going to say brother network lasers are the best. Hp is the worst from a driver user perspective .

Until the drums go bad

Or the drivers realize it's the year 2023 and purposefully slow printing down to a crawl.

I wasted WAAY TOO MUCH TIME making this(pic8.co)