Update: definitely appears to be related to MS Active Directory accounts. Only Macs running Sonoma with Domain accounts are affected. Of those, it appears to be 100% in our company... currently a massive issue throughout our Mac fleet of MacBooks and Desktops.

Will have still have to see after a reboot, but it does get Spotlight working everywhere again. Prior to this I had to make sure that my network cable was disconnected when I boot. This was the only solution that worked every time until now, seemingly making it clear that it is an AD issue (I am on a work network).