Is there a mismatch between biber and biblatex in MacTex 2023 on a MacBook 2023 Sonoma 14.4?

Question

MacTex 2023 does not generate pdf for apa documents with citation

After a re-run with biber (biber gives only INFO messages) the new run with TeXShop Typeset Latex gives an error: Missing \endcsname inserted After having given a couple of ENTERS a PDF is produced where the outputline with the citation contains text that seems to come from a .bbl file. Not sure if `I am looking into the right direction. i.e. mismatch between biber en biblatex

\documentclass[doc, 12pt, a4paper]{apa6}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}

\usepackage[american]{babel}
 \usepackage{csquotes}
 \usepackage[style=apa6,sortcites=true,sorting=nyt,backend=biber]{biblatex}
 \DeclareLanguageMapping{american}{american-apa}



% the title commands 
\title{The Title of the document.}
\shorttitle{subject of this document}
\author{The author's name}
\affiliation{the institute}
\abstract{comprehensive and brief is an abstract}

\addbibresource{learnlatex.bib}

\begin{document}
\maketitle

\newpage
\section{Intro}
This first paragraph following the section header should be indented as well as  the other paragraphs that are following. 
This is something that we test.

This is the second paragraph that should be indented as well; something that was already observed from non-apa document classes.

\section{citing}
let us refer to a resource \cite{Thomas2008}



\section{results}
apa6 and pdflatexmk


\end{document}

The type setting stops with a Missing \endcsname inserted. (see below)

 . . . 
texmf-dist/fonts/enc/dvips/lm/lm-ec.enc}]
./titlepag-1.tex:34: Missing \endcsname inserted.
<to be read again> 
                   \relax 
l.34 let us refer to a resource \cite{Thomas2008}
                                                 
? 

 . . . 

I give ENTER a couple of times to inspect the output.

Output looks like:

let us refer to a resource Thomas, Liu, Hall, and Darensbourg, 2008labelyear

Watch the text labelyear, that in not in the .tex file. It could have come from the .bbl file. I compared the difference between MacTex 2020 and MacTex 2023 .bbl files

MacTex 2023 runs biber 2.19 and biblatex 3.19 to generate a .bbl file? See relevant difference below

      \field{sortinithash}{9af77f0292593c26bde9a56e688eaee9}
      \field{extradatescope}{labelyear}     <<<< seems to apear in the pdf output 
      \field{labeldatesource}{}             <<<< only difference with Mactex 2020 bbl
      \true{uniqueprimaryauthor}
      \field{labelnamesource}{author}

I run the .tex on Mactex 2020 (MacBook 2011) and there is no problem at all.

Mactex 2020 runs biber 2.14 and biblatex 3.14 for the .bbl file see relevant difference below

      \field{sortinithash}{51f9faf24c60c62ca764a77f78cf5666}
      \field{extradatescope}{labelyear}
      \field{labeldatesource}{year}         <<<< watch the difference 
      \true{uniqueprimaryauthor}
      \field{labelnamesource}{author}
        . . .

What could be done to make MacTex2023 work to produce apa documents with citations?