WASHINGTON, DC – The United States Senate on December 12 unanimously passed a resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide, “in a stinging rebuke to Turkey,” USA Today reported.

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The passage also marks “a shift in U.S. policy despite repeated objections from the Trump administration,” USA Today reported, adding that “the Senate’s action is historic, and it will almost certainly exacerbate U.S.-Turkey tensions” and “the genocide measure officially recognizes the systematic killing of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923.”

BREAKING: Our resolution to recognize and commemorate the #ArmenianGenocide just passed the United States Senate. pic.twitter.com/TVbaneuOaq

— Senator Bob Menendez (@SenatorMenendez) December 12, 2019

The report in USA Today also noted that “for decades, Turkey had deployed an army of lobbyists to stop the measure. But that effort fell short on Thursday, when Sen. Robert Menendez, D-NJ, pressed for its adoption and no senator objected.”

Sen. Menendez, according to the USA Today report, “broke down in tears afterward, when he began recounting the horrors of the genocide.”