The code below always causes "null" to print in the console, indicating that Godot is entirely failing to find the node. I have ensured that the node path, spelling, and capitalization are entirely correct. This seemed like a weird software bug, so I tried restarting Godot, and even restarting my entire Computer, but nothing worked. The script calling this is on an Autoloaded node, but I have other Autoloaded nodes that use $ and are working fine, so I don't think Autoload has anything to do with the issue.
extends Control
onready var context_action = $ContextAction
func _ready():
print(context_action)
This is what my scene looks like:

Am I missing something or did $ actually break?