Thank you @it all makes cents
After following one of your recommended posts, I ended up at https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/scripting/dev-cross-plat/choosing-the-right-nuget-package?view=powershell-7.5&viewFallbackFrom=powershell-7.2
Not really understanding the entire article, I realized that System.Management.Automation and Microsoft.PowerShell.SDK are two different implementations for more or less the same thing. So I uninstalled Microsoft.PowerShell.SDK and followed the error messages.
Thus, I had to install:
afterwards, I again received an error for System.Identity.Tokens.JWT: The located assembly's manifest definition does not match the assembly reference. (0x80131040)
After some more googling I realized that this package is installed implicitly into my application. This caused it to be installed as an older version. However, I didnt know Rider displays the most recent version on the right hand side and the current version in the list on the left hand side. Installing it explicitly solved the issue.
Thank you so much!