Today’s Big Story

Shortages, Smoothies and Fraud

Matcha’s explosive demand is straining supply and fueling a rise of online scalpers

Everyone’s always quick to blame social media, but when it comes to the matcha crisis, they might be right. Japan’s ceremonial green tea has become the ingredient of the moment thanks to TikTok (shout out to the pilates girlies and performative males), but surging demand is creating unprecedented supply shortages to the point that online scalpers have taken to hawking the powdered green tea.

At the same time, Japan has experienced a mass tourism rise in the post-pandemic years—in 2024, Japan welcomed a record-breaking 36.9 million international visitors, surpassing the previous record of 31.9 million in 2019—leading to many mass tea companies and local vendors reporting shortages of supply. According to TIME, matcha is a type of green tea, but the processing, form and taste differs significantly, and is made specifically from tencha, a shaded green leaf tea. Matcha also only makes up a small amount of Japanese tea production—just 6%.

Still, Google searches for the drink have reached a 10-year high, and demand shows no signs of slowing. The global matcha market is expected to grow 10.2 percent per year over the next decade. While farmers adapt to the rise in demand, availability will remain tight and prices high. The supply shortages have also led to another unexpected problem—scalpers. Encouraged by the high prices, unauthorized resellers are buying in bulk to sell at a higher premium or flooding the market with lower quality, potentially untested bargain products.

Highly respected Japanese firms are at war with scores of vendors who resell their matcha far above the normal retail price on Amazon, Facebook Marketplace and other sites. Others are hawking the tea trade’s equivalent of $45 Chanel bags, counterfeit packages filled with third-rate product, or with ordinary tea ground to a dull yellow dust.

Other practices, while not as deceptive, are wildly untraditional. Green lattes and smoothies are prepared with shortcuts (batched concentrate, nicknamed batcha) and flavorings (banana bread!) that send ripples of horror down the spines of matcha purists. The New York Times reports that “baristas inhale so much airborne green powder that they joke about coming down with matcha lung.” For the sake of everyone … let’s just slow down folks.

The Ceasefire Holds … for Now

Hamas reasserts control in a chaotic Gaza

Hamas returned the remains of four additional deceased hostages on Tuesday after Israel accused the group of noncompliance with the U.S.-brokered peace deal and threatened to cut aid to Gaza. As the ceasefire holds, Hamas security forces have returned to the streets, clashed with armed groups and killed alleged gangsters in what the militant group says is an attempt to restore law and order in areas where Israeli troops have withdrawn.

The UN’s humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, told the BBC that Hamas had to “get the bodies home, as they promised”, but also that Israel had to keep crossings into Gaza open in order for “desperately needed” aid to be delivered. The peace summit in Egypt earlier this week reflected how, once enough pressure had been applied, seemingly huge impediments could be overcome, or at least set aside for later. In the past, the two sides had fallen back on absolutes. Israel insisted on “total victory,” and Hamas on a total Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

Will it hold? Everyone seems hopeful. Of course, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly said the war will not end until Hamas has been dismantled, and U.S. President Donald Trump’s ceasefire plan calls for Hamas to disarm and hand power over to an internationally supervised body that has yet to be formed.

Media Rejects Pentagon Press Policy

Outlets from the Washington Post and CNN to Fox News and Newsmax

What is going on over at the Pentagon? The Defense Department told beat reporters to sign restrictive new rules by Tuesday or surrender their press passes by today. Virtually every news outlet—from newspapers and news agencies to CNN and even Fox News and Newsmax—has rejected the ultimatum and said they will not sign. As of Tuesday’s 5 p.m. deadline, only the MAGA-friendly One America News had said it would sign the policy.

The policy prohibits journalists from accessing or soliciting information the Defense Department doesn’t make available for them and revokes Pentagon press credentials from those who will not sign on. The new rules have drawn an anguished chorus of detractors across the ideological spectrum since they were announced last month.

The result, The Atlantic’s Nancy Youssef wrote on X, is that reporters will take part in an unprecedented clearing out of the Defense Department’s gargantuan headquarters in Northern Virginia. “Starting Wednesday, for the first time since the Pentagon opened in 1943, there will be likely no major news outlets accredited to cover the [department], the one spending nearly $1 trillion of taxpayer money.”

Instagram Will Limit Content for Teens

Restrictions also apply to conversations between teenage users and artificial intelligence chatbots

The kids want their social media … but Instagram said Tuesday that it would overhaul its approach to teenagers’ accounts and try to crack down on their access to objectionable content after a firestorm of bad publicity over how teens use the social media app.

The Meta-owned social platform announced that moving forward its teen accounts “will be guided” by the Motion Picture Association’s PG-13 rating, which limits language, drug use, violence, nudity and other mature themes. However, the MPA (the trade group that represents major Hollywood studios), apparently didn’t get a heads up that the company was borrowing its ratings framework. “We welcome efforts to protect kids from content that may not be appropriate for them,” the MPA chairman told Variety. “But assertions that Instagram’s new tool will be ‘guided by PG-13 movie ratings’ or have any connection to the film industry’s rating system are inaccurate.”

By choosing the PG-13 standard, Instagram aims to make its new policy familiar to parents. Those movies are generally allowed to have some swear words, mild violence and partial nudity, although Meta said it would not recommend content with nudity to teen users. Meta, which also owns Facebook, WhatsApp and Messenger, has long contended with concerns over how its apps affect children. Mark Zuckerberg has been hauled in front of Congress to be grilled by lawmakers over child safety issues. Meta also faces personal injury lawsuits in state and federal court that accuse it of harming young people with an addicting product.

Go Bolder This Fall

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