Moulton says Sen. Markey, 80, is too old for another term. Young Massachusetts Democrats are divided

BOSTON (AP) — In a race that has centered on whether Ed Markey, 80, is too old for another U.S. Senate term, the Massachusetts Democrat's answer to a recent debate question was especially striking.

When asked whether he uses AI platforms like Claude or ChatGPT in his work, Markey seemed unclear on the topic. He responded that he uses “whatever is inside of my iPhone or my iPad — whatever comes up” and added that he doesn't know “what companies my iPad may be using.”

For Arsen Bagdassarian, an 18-year-old supporter of Markey’s rival, 47-year-old U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, the answer reinforced a concern that has become central to Moulton’s campaign to unseat the incumbent in Tuesday's party primary: that Markey, who would be 86 at the end of another term, is too old to represent a generation confronting problems that didn’t exist when Markey entered Congress 50 years ago.

“To be frank, I didn’t expect him to be as clueless as he really was on that topic,” said Bagdassarian, an incoming freshman at Boston’s Northeastern University. Artificial intelligence is “a major concern,” he said, and the country needs leaders “who understand what they’re being asked to regulate.”

The 2026 midterms have brought a number of generational challenges like the one Moulton is waging against Markey, with younger Democrats taking on — and in some cases unseating — longtime incumbents. There are signs that Democratic voters, especially, are looking for change, and some young voters argue older politicians can’t truly understand a world transformed by artificial intelligence, rising housing costs and student debt.

But that hasn’t been the case for all young people voting for the Senate nominee in a heavily Democratic state where the primary often decides who wins office. Markey has a strong following of young supporters, some of whom say that the internal party debate is more over policy than age. He’s won the endorsement of the High School Democrats of America and the College Democrats of America, as well as the backing of popular progressives such as U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Among those younger supporters is Matt Kelly, president of the UMass Lowell College Democrats. Kelly doesn't dispute that Markey stumbled when asked about his use of AI, saying, “I'll admit it wasn't a good answer.”

But Kelly said he cares less about whether Markey knows how to use the latest technology than whether he understands how to govern it. Moulton’s relative youth, Kelly said, doesn’t necessarily make his views more representative of young voters.

“Just because he has a younger face doesn’t mean that he has younger ideas,” he said.

Many of Markey’s younger supporters turn Moulton’s argument about the senator’s 50-year political career on its head. To them, longevity provides a record they can judge — one that shows whether politicians held the same positions before they became popular with younger voters. One example is Markey’s vote in 2002 against the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, which later led to the creation of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Milan van Dam, a 17-year-old who serves as national chair of the High School Democrats of America, said generational leadership is “less about an age on a Wikipedia page” than the ideas a candidate represents and their consistency through time.

Abby Shadden, a 21-year-old Emmanuel College student, similarly pointed to Markey’s co-authorship of the Green New Deal and his early support for Medicare for All.

“There is this idea that younger people are just automatically more progressive when, in this case, it is very much not true,” she said.

For Kelly, the debate over AI is already playing out close to home. A proposed data center in Lowell, where he attends college, has generated opposition from some residents over its potential impact on the community. Kelly said Markey’s push for greater regulation of data centers matters more to him than the senator’s awkward answer about AI.

Kelly said his generation will be graduating into an economy increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence while facing a cost of living that has made it harder to achieve the same financial security as previous generations.

“Yes, Ed Markey’s answer rhetorically didn’t come off well, optically didn’t look well,” Kelly said. But when it comes to who will be good for “the group that’s graduating into this new economy,” he said, Markey’s record matters more.

Moulton seized on Markey's debate answer, telling him: “Senator, if you don’t even know what you’re using on your phone or your iPad, like this is why we need a new generation of leaders to regulate these technologies.” Moulton called Markey’s loose grasp of the technology “potentially disqualifying.”

Markey pushed back, saying, “It doesn’t make any difference whether it’s called Siri or it’s called Claude,” and emphasizing that familiarity with individual AI products was less important than putting safeguards around the technology. He pointed to legislation he has introduced to regulate AI’s effects on children, workers, civil rights, and the environment.

Moulton has emphasized Markey’s age throughout the race, calling for “generational change” and age limits for members of Congress.

For some of Moulton’s young supporters, however, the argument is about more than the candidates’ ages.

Molly Blander, an 18-year-old incoming Tufts University freshman, pointed to artificial intelligence and social media as technologies that have reshaped life for her generation — including its mental health. She cited Moulton’s work to establish 988 as the national suicide and crisis lifeline as an example of the kind of response she wants to see.

“Social media has created a modern mental health problem, so we need modern solutions,” Blander said.

“The world before AI is so different than it is now,” Blander added. “I think what was hard to see and hard to understand is that my senator does not understand one of the challenges that we’ve been facing.”

Her generation’s political world has also been shaped by Republican President Donald Trump.

“In my lifetime, I haven’t seen the Democratic Party and the Democratic establishment really make things much better,” she said, pointing to rising housing and energy costs and Trump’s rise and reelection. “And so I feel like the status quo and the establishment that we have now just isn’t working.”

Associated Press writer Michael Casey contributed to this report.

U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., who is challenging Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass. in the Sept. 1, 2026 primary, speaks to Rich Giannino of Essex, Mass., during a campaign stop at the Agawam Diner Saturday, Aug. 29, 2026, in Rowley, Mass. (AP Photo/Josh Reynolds)

Sen. Ed Markey speaks during a Get Out the Vote event supporting Markey, Saturday, Aug. 29, 2026 in Boston. (AP Photo/Mark Stockwell)

U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass. who is campaigning to unseat Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., speaks to prospective voters Saturday, Aug. 29, 2026, in Wakefield, Mass. (AP Photo/Josh Reynolds)

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass. and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT., , left to right, wave to attendees during a Get Out the Vote event supporting Markey, Saturday, Aug. 29, 2026 in Boston. (AP Photo/Mark Stockwell)

In this combination photo, Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., speaks during a news conference at the Capitol in Washington, March 27, 2025, left, and Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., speaks during a candidate forum, Aug. 3, 2019, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Besides a social media post from President Donald Trump, the White House has said little about what he is calling “THE BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY” in Venezuela.

Trump said the agreement announced Friday night would give the United States a stake in Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, a step toward his goal of extracting energy from the country after American forces captured then-President Nicolás Maduro in a middle-of-the-night raid in January and brought him to New York to face federal drug trafficking charges.

Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, described the deal as a step toward economic recovery that will modernize the country’s oil industry. In a televised address to the nation late Sunday, Rodríguez insisted Venezuela's sovereignty is secure and said she wants the country to become a global energy powerhouse.

Earlier on Saturday, she said the oil reserves would “cease to be an inert, cold statistic and will instead become concrete solutions. Housing is one of them.”

But the answers to many questions, including how soon the reserves could be drilled and who will pay to make it happen, were not immediately clear. No text of any agreement has been released.

A look at what is known and unknown:

The U.S. government and an unnamed private operator in Venezuela formed a new company that was given the rights to untapped oil fields for 100 years.

A statement from Rodríguez said the deal involves the development of 17 fields with a proven potential of 65 billion barrels. It said the agreement could draw $100 billion in investment into Venezuela’s oil industry and yield over $209 billion in taxes for Caracas.

Trump said the agreement was negotiated by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Rodríguez.

The deal gives the United States 55% effective output of the new private company, including an ownership stake and rights to buy oil at cost. American purchases of the oil will go toward the U.S. strategic oil reserves along with the military, according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The company would be the second largest corporate holder of proven reserves after Saudi Aramco, according to the official.

Probably not any time soon.

Trump says the deal will help lower gas prices for Americans. That is an important objective for the Republican president as the Iran war slows the shipping of Persian Gulf oil and keeps prices elevated months before November elections in the United States.

But experts have repeatedly warned that Venezuela’s dilapidated oil infrastructure will take years and billions of dollars to repair. A substantial boost in production is not expected to happen quickly.

The deal could be “helpful in the long run, but it’s not going to do anything to change the price of gasoline at the retail station for Labor Day weekend,” said Amy Myers Jaffe, director of the Energy, Climate Justice and Sustainability Lab at New York University.

Neither side made clear who would pay for infrastructure investments and at what cost.

The average price of gas in the U.S. stood at about $4.08 a gallon on Saturday, according to AAA. The average price was $3.20 at the same time last year.

Kevin Book, managing director at ClearView Energy Partners, said the oil industry is awaiting clarity on the deal's details. Venezuela has room to increase its oil production, he said — in the past it produced more than 2.5 million barrels a day above current levels — but investments of this scale don't happen quickly.

“It’s going to take time — many years — to deploy that much capital and produce the kind of incremental results that history suggests possible," Book said.

Some in Venezuela considered it a betrayal of what their government has stated repeatedly for decades: Venezuelan resources are for Venezuela, and leaders would not allow the U.S. government access to those resources.

At a market in eastern Caracas on Saturday, Douglas Borjas said he was upset about the announcement.

“I think they’re doing it to cling to power,” he said of Venezuela’s leaders. “It’s like, ‘I’m giving you a vast amount of petroleum as long as you leave me alone here in power.’”

He added: “The Venezuelan people deserve better. Venezuela has resources that can be exploited, but for the benefit of the people, not for the benefit of the corrupt elite.”

Harvard University professor Ricardo Hausmann, a former Venezuelan planning minister, called it a “shameful deal."

“Venezuelans will not respect this illegitimate deal and no major US oil company will take it seriously because they know it will not last,” Hausmann said on social media, adding that Rodríguez “has no legitimacy or constitutional power to commit Venezuela to any such deal."

In her national address, Rodríguez pushed back on some of the early criticism.

“One thing must be absolutely clear: Venezuela retains ownership and sovereignty over its resources,” Rodríguez said. She said the goal is to reach other agreements with transnational private companies such as Chevron, Repsol and Shell.

She added: “We want to be an energy powerhouse, a major oil producer, a significant gas exporter, and a major national petrochemical developer."

It is unclear whether Congress will play a role in the arrangement, but lawmakers from both parties were quick to weigh in.

Trump allies called it a win.

Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, said it was a historic deal that helps both countries. “If it were up to DC Democrats, Maduro would still be in power, Venezuelan oil would be going to China at half price, and the people of Venezuela would be getting robbed by a corrupt regime,” Moreno wrote on social media.

It was condemned by Democrats who said Maduro's capture was a means to this end.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said Trump was always after Venezuela's oil, branding it “corruption at epic scale.”

“Will prices come down for Americans? Who knows but likely not as much as Trump has forced them up thru his idiotic Iran War," Kaine said on social media.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said Trump “put our service members at risk to get Venezuelan oil for his billionaire buddies.”

Many important details remain unclear, including who will cover necessary investments, the identity of the private operator and how America’s stake in the company breaks down.

The U.S. will get 55% of the company's effective output, but it was not clear what portion of that comes from an ownership stake and how much comes from the right to buy oil at cost.

It also is unclear how the industry will react. Persuading big American oil companies to return to the region could prove a challenge given the political uncertainty and damaged infrastructure.

Chevron, the only U.S. oil company actively producing in Venezuela, declined to comment. Separately from Trump’s announcement, Chevron already had been in talks to expand investment in the country. Exxon Mobil also declined to comment.

David Oxley, chief climate and commodities economist at Capital Economics, said that on its face, the deal could double U.S. oil reserves and reduce dependence on crude oil from Canada and Mexico. But Oxley, writing in a commentary, cautioned that there are logistical hurdles and said the value of Venezuela's reserves may have been exaggerated under former President Hugo Chavez.

Even with legal and security guarantees, it is not clear that U.S. oil companies “would be eager to invest,’’ he wrote, noting that “there simply might be more enticing commercial opportunities on offer elsewhere.’’

Arráez reported from Caracas, Venezuela. Associated Press writer Moriah Balingit and AP Economics Writer Paul Wiseman in Washington contributed to this report.

A pedestrian walks past a mural featuring oil wells in Caracas, Venezuela, Saturday, Aug 29, 2026, a day after President Donald Trump announced a deal giving the United States a stake in Venezuela’s oil reserves. (AP Photo/Pedro Mattey)

A man holds a sign with a message that reads in Spanish; "" Yankee out, murderers" during a protest against President Donald Trump's deal giving the United States a stake in Venezuela’s oil reserves in Caracas, Saturday, Aug 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Pedro Mattey)

Venezuelans protest against President Donald Trump's deal giving the United States a stake in Venezuela’s oil reserves in Caracas, Saturday, Aug 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Pedro Mattey)

President Donald Trump speaks during an event to present the Congressional Space Medal of Honor to Artemis II crew members, Friday, Aug. 28, 2026, at Johnson Space Center in Houston. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

FILE - Flames rise from flare stacks at the Amuay refinery in Los Taques, Venezuela, Jan. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix, File)