On bright hide, i hope mixer will make new innovation where they offer non-custodial privacy-enchanting service. Or maybe they should switch business where they fork Wasabi Wallet and run their own WabiSabi coordinator without any blacklist.
If you are afraid US government might shut down Bitcointalk, move to servers where US has no jurisdiction, if you are concerned about your personal safety, officially "resign" as forum admin, and hand it over to an anonymous entity.
Aside from server, theymos probably also need to stop U.S. based service. Currently Bitcointalk depends on CloudFlare (AFAIK they based on U.S.) to prevent DDoS and other form of attack, so such option would be tall order.
Does using or acting as an escrow count as mixing?
Why?/Why not?
I would say no, especially when it doesn't even break transaction link.
Sender address -> Receiver address
Sender address -> Escrow address -> Receiver address
If any of these address is known publicly, it should be to track rest of them.