In a milestone accord, President Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro agreed Wednesday to swiftly reestablish diplomatic relations and reopen embassies in each other’s capitals, finally ending the half-century diplomatic freeze between the two Cold War adversaries.

Standing in a sunny Rose Garden, Obama said many Americans and Cubans were making a “choice between the future and the past” and urged critics in Congress to do the same by lifting the decades-old U.S. trade embargo...

...Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also slammed the White House move. “Once again the regime is being rewarded while they jail dissidents, silence political opponents, and harbor American fugitives and cop killers,” he said in a statement.

The foreign policy shift immediately became part of the 2016 presidential race, although it’s unclear whether the issue has resonance beyond parts of Florida where Cuban exiles are based.

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