They're doing token things like not federally prosecuting anyone in medically/recreationally legal states, pardoning and releasing all federal possession offenders (which actually frees nobody because federal prosecution tends to come with more serious trafficking or violent felonies and the vast majority of possession offenses are prosecuted in state courts), and proposing bills/hearings about allowing legal states federal banking access (but still not giving it to them) or lowering it from a schedule I to III controlled substance (which the DEA has just delayed the next hearing for), but the feds are always stopping short of fully legalizing, seemingly not even trying.

The reason they're doing this is to get more and more states to legalize medical and recreational weed under violation of federal law so that they can collect more and more tax money from it under tax code 280E, which states anyone claiming taxes for the trafficking of a schedule I or II controlled substance cannot make deductions, meaning a weed farm that makes $1,000,000 but has $400,000 in expenses and is taxed at 30% would pay 30% of $1,000,000 ($300,000) in taxes instead of 30% of $300,000 ($90,000) in taxes because they can't make deductions. $300,000 in taxes out of a $300,000 profit is effectively a 100% tax rate, which all goes to the feds. In real life, it's not quite that extreme, but it can effectively amount to anywhere from a 60% to over 90% federal tax rate.

You see the feds' plan here, right? They're gonna do nothing meaningful that would get rid of that 280E status for weed while campaigning pro-weed legislation they have no intention to pass and continuing to not prosecute medically/recreationally legal states in order to encourage the other 12 non-medical states and 26 non-recreational states to legalize so they can collect those huge tax rates from all the legal weed in the country. Maybe they'll change 280E to allow banking access so those complaints will stop, but that's all I can see them doing of actual value. This is what my general theory is on the future of legal weed in the US.