Two children aged four and under were killed after a car struck them while they were crossing the street in Brooklyn on Monday afternoon, leading transit advocates to call for safer streets in a protest outside a nearby YMCA where Mayor Bill de Blasio frequently works out.

Four-year-old Abigail Blumstein and 1-year-old Joshua Lew were with their mothers Ruth Ann Blumstein, 34, and Lauren Lew, 33, when they were struck at 12:40 p.m. Monday.

The driver, identified as 44-year-old Dorothy Burn, had not been charged as of Tuesday afternoon. Burn’s Volvo was stopped at a red light before beginning to inch into the intersection. Police said that Burn, whose car was cited four previous times for running red lights, began to speed up as pedestrians started to cross.

“There’s a full investigation underway,” de Blasio said. “This loss of life is tragic and painful for all of us, especially parents.”

The children’s mothers, who were also injured in the crash, were rushed to New York Presbyterian Methodist Brooklyn Hospital and are now in stable condition.

Blumstein, who is pregnant, is a Tony Award-winning Broadway actress, better known by her stage name Ruthie Ann Miles. A GoFundMe campaign has already raised more than $170,000 to aid her and her family. A separate page was set up to raise money for Lauren Lew and her family.

The intersection where Monday’s crash occurred, between Fourth and Fifth avenues, has been the scene of 10 traffic injuries since 2014, and one other pedestrian fatality in 2016.

“We have been calling for changes on this street and streets like it for years, and nothing has been done,” Park Slope resident and rally organizer Doug Gordon told amNY.

Contact Haley Cohen at hcohen@forward.com

Bernie Sanders’ stepdaughter is hoping to launch her political career in the same city that her stepfather did almost 40 years ago.

Carina Driscoll, 44, is running as an independent for mayor of Burlington, Vermont, challenging incumbent Democratic Mayor Miro Weinberger, who is seeking his third three-year term in Tuesday’s election.

Driscoll’s campaign goals include transitioning towards renewable energy, electric cars and improved public transportation, according to 350Vermont.

Sanders’ son Levi also announced last week that he plans to follow in the family’s political legacy. The 48-year-old Democrat is running in the Democratic primary to fill an empty congressional seat in New Hampshire’s 1st District.

Contact Haley Cohen at hcohen@forward.com

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Sen. Robert Menendez received a hero’s welcome at AIPAC, where the New Jersey Democrat thanked the lobby for its support during his corruption trial.

Menendez, who returned recently to the top Democratic spot on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee after his trial ended in a mistrial, was among the few speakers to the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy conference to receive a standing ovation just for walking on the stage.

“Sometimes God puts a Goliath in your path until you find the David within you, and I found the David within me,” Menendez said. “Many of you today were part of that slingshot.”

Menendez, a leading pro-Israel Democrat, fundraised in the pro-Israel community during his trial. In 2015, federal prosecutors charged Menendez with accepting favors from a political donor. The Justice Department dropped the charges in January following the mistrial late last year.

An unsubstantiated narrative persists among some in the pro-Israel community that the Obama administration initiated the prosecution because Menendez was among a handful of Senate Democrats who opposed the Iran nuclear deal of the same year. No evidence has emerged to support the thesis.

“When my children ask me if I knew what was going to happen, would I have taken those same stands, and my answer is a resolute yes,” Menendez said to one of multiple standing ovations.

Menendez encouraged the Trump administration to supplement the Iran deal, which traded sanctions relief for a rollback in Iran’s nuclear program, by coordinating with Europe to target Iran’s missile program and Iranian military adventurism.

He also targeted the Trump administration for giving what he depicted as a free hand to Russia in Syria.

“These agreements with Russia are dangerous,” he said. “In Syria, here at home or around the world, Russia is not a partner for stability and peace.”

United States Ambassador to Israel David Friedman took another shot at the liberal pro-Israel lobby J Street, calling its motto “blasphemous” in a speech Tuesday at the policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

Friedman has a long history of troubled relations with J Street. He once referred to the organization’s members as “worse than kapos,” the Jews who collaborated with the Nazis during the Holocaust.

After assuming the role of America’s top diplomat to Israel, Friedman apologized for his prior statements and tried to tone down his criticism. But while addressing 18,000 AIPAC delegates, Friedman said he took issue with J Street’s motto, which describes themselves as “pro Israel, pro peace.”

“If you support Israel, then you must by definition support peace with its neighbors,” Friedman said. “It is no less than blasphemous to suggest that any Jew or any Christian is against peace.”

The president of J Street, Jeremy Ben-Ami, said in response that pursuing peace required taking action.

“Contra David Friedman, it’s not blasphemous to suggest that the settlement movement and its allies in the Netanyahu and Trump governments are not committed to peace,” he said. “They have spent years helping to expand and entrench the occupation — undermining the two-state solution and endangering Israel’s future.”

Contact Nathan Guttman at guttman@forward.com or on Twitter @nathanguttman

(JTA) — A leading news site in Poland reported that it had obtained documents suggesting that the country’s highest officials are not welcome at the White House over a law limiting discourse on World War II.

The documents, which the news site Onet did not describe in its March 5 report, mean that President Andrzej Duda and Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki will not be received by President Trump or any other member of the administration in the United States at all, the report said.

Staff from the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw also threatened to suspend funding for joint military projects between the United States and Poland, according to Onet.

The alleged crisis in U.S.-Polish relations is over the passing last month of a law that criminalizes blaming Poland for Nazi crimes. Critics of the law include Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who called it “baseless.” Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem warned it is detrimental to debate and research of the genocide. And Israeli politicians, including the opposition lawmaker Yair Lapid, said it whitewashes what they called Polish complicity in the Holocaust – an allegations many Poles find offensive and that the Polish government rejects.

The U.S. Embassy in Poland last month warned that it was “concerned about the repercussions” for bilateral relations after the Polish Senate passed the legislation.

Later that month, Morawiecki during an interview made a remark about the existence of Jewish perpetrators of the Holocaust, along with Polish, Ukrainian and German ones. Decried as a form of Holocaust denial or revisionism in Poland and abroad, his remark prompted an unusually harsh reaction from Netanyahu, who called Morawiecki’s assertion “outrageous.”