I hope this is a case of Apple delaying it long enough to silently cancel the feature or completely change it to not be on-device scanning rather than Apple delaying it long enough to be well out of the news cycle and silently enable it at a later date. Both features mentioned have potential for abuse and create an adversarial relationship with ones own device so I'm not sure what they do to implement them without these remaining concerns.
The modus operandi of the surveillance state is to back off something newly intrusive just long enough for the outcry to die down and then slip it in when no one is looking. I'd expect this not to be canceled, but to find its way in to an update on a holiday weekend when no one is checking the news.
Well the day they announced it was also just a largely unremarkable day towards the start of a weekend but it still turned into a fiasco, so hopefully not.
I’d say very likely canceled quietly. Otherwise they are just taking the punishment twice, there isn’t a change they could make that would allow them to go live with this kind of thing at a later date and not get raked over the coals.
A delay in either case is welcome.