The impending Democratic opening at the top of the House Oversight Committee has reopened rifts between the party establishment and its younger insurgent wing.

Back in December, then 74-year-old Gerry Connolly —who was being treated for esophageal cancer—was elected ranking member of the powerful watchdog panel over Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the 35-year-old progressive who has emerged as one of the party’s most dynamic stars. The snub seemed, at the time, a reflection of a deeper issue for Democrats: that the party’s aging old guard was too reluctant to abandon its power, and valued seniority and longevity over the kind of change that Democrats’ 2024 losses seemed to call for.

Five months later, with Donald Trump running roughshod over democracy, Connolly will be stepping down from his leadership role due to a reemergence of his cancer. But AOC, who had been said to be considering another run for the Oversight post, ultimately decided against throwing her hat into the ring: “It’s actually clear to me,” she told reporters Monday, “that the underlying dynamics in the caucus have not shifted with respect to seniority as much as I think would be necessary.”

Ocasio-Cortez’s decision leaves an open lane for other younger Democrats to make a run at the position, including Jasmine Crockett, Maxwell Frost, and Robert Garcia. But it could also make the path for 70-year-old Massachusetts representative Stephen Lynch —who has been endorsed by Connolly and some other more establishment figures—all the clearer.

To be sure, the divide isn’t just about age, as Pennsylvania progressive Summer Lee —one of the younger members of the Oversight Committee—told me. “I know some old folks who got fire still, and maybe are more ideologically connected to me,” the 37-year-old said. But, Lee suggested, some of the younger Democrats are better able to rise up to these “unprecedented times” because they are able to see them more clearly, without the fog of nostalgia.

“There are, quite frankly, people who were here at a time when bipartisanship existed. I’ve never seen it. There are people who were here before the Tea Party and before Trump as a politician existed, and they have a nostalgia for the institution as it existed then,” Lee said. But “we are in times that take different tactics.”

The fight over Oversight is, of course, a proxy fight for a bigger battle among Democrats. Many of its leaders have faced criticism—within the conference and among the base—for taking a perhaps too careful , sometimes anemic , occasionally helpless approach to Trump’s all-out assault on America’s democratic system.

Some have downplayed interparty divides: Representative Wesley Bell, a 50-year-old Oversight member, told me that any differences among Democrats are “boutique” issues compared with the unified front they are presenting against the Trump administration. “I think there’s a great dynamic of young people with energy and bringing a different perspective, but then also folks who are veterans, who have the experience and wisdom,” Bell said. “I think Democrats are doing everything that we possibly can to push back.”

But the base—already frustrated with a party that, in sticking with a senescent Joe Biden last year until it was too late, has lost two out of the last three elections to Trump—has shown an appetite for a more aggressive approach to fighting the current administration: “We don’t need [an Oversight leader]…who’s going to be sending, like, strongly worded letters,” said Santiago Mayer, founder of Voters of Tomorrow, the Democratic-aligned Gen Z political group. “I think we’re now in a moment where we need that energy and we need that fight.”

There have been some signs of a changing of the Democratic guard; just in the past two weeks, two prominent lawmakers—Senator Dick Durbin , the minority whip, and fellow Illinoisan Jan Schakowsky, who has served in the House since 1999—announced that they would not seek reelection, with both 80-year-olds citing a desire to pass the torch. Meanwhile, a growing number of long-serving members are expected to face primary fights from younger challengers—a movement that has the backing of David Hogg, a 25-year-old vice chair of the Democratic National Committee. (Hogg’s active support of primary challenges to incumbent Democrats has been controversial, drawing a rebuke from DNC Chair Ken Martin: “No DNC officer should ever attempt to influence the outcome of a primary election, whether on behalf of an incumbent or a challenger,” he said last month.) At the very least, Lee suggested to me, there is a “more robust conversation” underway about the party’s leadership and approach.

The question is what that conversation will mean for Oversight, where the next leader will be tasked with bringing together what Lee called a “constellation” of stars working to provide some check on Trump: “There’s a lot of tension between what direction we’re going in” as a party, Lee told me. “The Oversight Committee obviously epitomizes that.”