I tried to sync my portage tree a few minutes before posting this. At the end of the sync process I saw the following output:

Performing Global Updates
(Could take a couple of minutes if you have a lot of binary packages.)
.='update pass' *='binary update' #='/var/db update' @='/var/db move'
s='/var/db SLOT move' %='binary move' S='binary SLOT move'
p='update /etc/portage/package.*'
/var/git/meta-repo/kits/core-kit/profiles/updates/3Q-2019.
ERROR: Malformed update entry 'move >=dev-lang/lua-5.3 dev-lua/lua'