I have some long standing Lovelace cards where the card_mod styles have just stop working. This one is not actually one of those but one I have been toying with to see where the problem is. This is very basic and the card_mod portion of it is copied directly from the card_mod repository. I have tried this with the entity, entities, button (the original problem child), and custom-mushroom-entity-card.
The below code uses the entities card to keep it simple but the font_size: ( or font-size:) has no effect nor does the color: style.
type: entities
entities:
- entity: binary_sensor.motion_1_motion
show_name: false
show_icon: true
card_mod:
style: |
ha-card {
font-size: 40px;
}