As voters this week begin to receive mail-in ballots for Primary races in the House District 87 Special Election, Democratic small-business owner Emily Gregory’s campaign is touting new endorsements and a fundraising milestone.

Gregory’s campaign said she’s now crossed the $80,000 mark — about $24,000 more than she reported gaining by late November.

She also welcomed endorsements from U.S. Rep. Lois Frankel, Senate Democratic Leader Lori Berman, and Reps. Mitch Rosenwald and Kelly Skidmore, Palm Beach County Tax Collector Anne Gannon and Delray Beach Commissioner Rob Long, who won the vacant House District 90 seat Tuesday.

In a statement, Frankel called Gregory “smart, compassionate and relentlessly focused on helping Florida families.”

“As a mom, she understands that families are being crushed by rising costs,” Frankel said. “She’s committed to lowering costs for families, fixing Florida’s property insurance disaster, and investing in strong public schools. Emily is a fighter who shows up, listens, and leads with community at the center.”

The new nods join others from Ruth’s List Florida, Florida NOW, Vote Mama and Moms Fed Up.

Gregory, a first-time candidate, said in a statement that she is “honored” by the added support from “Democratic leaders who have been fighting for our communities for years.”

“This campaign is about ensuring Florida families have the freedom to build a secure future, affordable homes, great public schools, and access to quality health care,” she said. “With VBM ballots going out this week, these endorsements and the more than $80,000 we’ve raised reflect the strength of our campaign. Together, we’re going to flip this seat and deliver real solutions for the people of District 87.”

Gregory is competing in a Democratic Primary against comedian Laura Levites. The winner will face one of two Republicans running: Lake Clarke Shores Council member John Maples, who has garnered support from several Republican House members and local leaders, and real estate agent Gretchen Miller Feng.

The winner will take the seat Republican Mike Caruso vacated when Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed him to serve as Palm Beach County Clerk in August. DeSantis called a Special Election two months later, after Gregory sued to compel him to call it.

The deadline to request mail-in ballots for the HD 87 Primary is Jan. 1. Early voting runs Jan. 3-10. Election Day is Jan. 13.

The General Election is on March 24, well into the 2026 Legislative Session. Click here for information on important dates.

HD 87 covers a coastal portion of Palm Beach County. It includes portions of Palm Beach Gardens and Jupiter, as well as coastal communities from Juno Beach to Hypoluxo.

Attorney General James Uthmeier has filed a lawsuit against online gaming platform Roblox for “knowingly” facilitating conditions for sexual predators.

The 76-page lawsuit was filed Thursday in the 8th Judicial Circuit Court in Baker County. There’s no one particular victim listed in the lawsuit, but the filing states, “These predators use the Roblox (application) to find, groom, and abuse children. Florida children have been coerced into taking and sending sexual images of themselves. Others have been physically abducted and raped.”

The lawsuit follows several legal maneuvers by Uthmeier this year challenging Roblox’s operations. There was already one civil action, and Uthmeier launched a criminal investigation of the online platform in October.

In a video statement published Thursday, Uthmeier said that the criminal investigation, which included subpoenas, continues to probe Roblox. But he decided to file the civil action regardless.

“We reviewed the information demanded in our subpoena, and what we found is unacceptable,” Uthmeier said. “Roblox aggressively markets to young children. But fails to protect them from sexual predators.”

The lawsuit alleges Roblox violated Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practice Act on five counts. The legal action seeks a court injunction to block Roblox from engaging in the acts alleged and civil penalties up to $10,000 per violation and additional penalties up to $150,000.

A key element of the lawsuit is Uthmeier’s office’s claim that Roblox “attracts vulnerable child users by design.” The court action details investigations by Uthmeier’s office that he claims uncovered intentional efforts to lure children into sexually charged circumstances.

The lawsuit alleges that Uthmeier’s investigators created fraudulent Roblox accounts and used them to assess whether the platform was accessible to minors, including by testing age verification and facial age estimation. The investigators posed as a 7-year-old girl, an 8-year-old boy, a 10-year-old boy, a 15-year-old girl and a 47-year-old male. The lawsuit includes screenshots of the Roblox entry page and instructions for creating a Roblox account. The lawsuit alleged that Roblox lacked safeguards to verify that parental consent was obtained.

“Roblox does nothing to confirm or document that parental permission has been given, no matter how young a child is. Nor does Roblox require a parent to confirm the age that the child provides when creating a Roblox account,” the lawsuit said, adding, “Roblox could do more; it chooses not to.”

Uthemeier stated that, given the lack of oversight of who was creating accounts on the platform, he decided to proceed with legal action.

“Roblox broke the trust of parents, and my office will make sure they answer for it,” Uthmeier said.

Miami Mayor-elect Eileen Higgins credits her historic win this week to a confluence of factors, from various affordability issues to City Hall dysfunction.

She also believes President Donald Trump inadvertently gave her a boost.

In an appearance on “Morning Joe” two days after winning the Miami Mayor’s race by nearly 20 points over a Trump-endorsed opponent, Higgins said fear of the President’s hard-line anti-immigration policies “influenced a lot of people’s vote.”

“There’s this politics of trickle-down hatred, where our immigrant population is not only insulted but also really afraid of the federal government,” she said, using a play on the Reagan-era “trickle-down economics” phrase.

Higgins said she has heard worries from residents across the city that they, their relatives or friends will be swept up in raids by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which received a massive budget increase this year to ramp up detainment and deportation efforts.

“People are afraid,” she said. “I’ve never experienced that in any of my elections before. People want government to work for them. They were never afraid of government, and that’s changed.”

Higgins, a former Miami-Dade Commissioner, said that she and most Americans want a secure border, to know who is entering and exiting the country, and to block criminals from crossing into the country.

That was the policy Trump and his supporters in government sold to the people, she said, but it’s not what the administration has delivered. And with a huge immigrant population across South Florida — the most populous part of a state with an estimated 400,000 holders of temporary protected status at risk — it’s going to severely impact local and state budgets, she said.

“Are we really going to deport 300,000 people and ruin the economy of South Florida? To me, this anti-immigrant fervor, it’s gone too far. It’s inhumane. It’s cruel. I’m Catholic, so I think it’s a sin. And it’s bad for the economy,” she said. “They’re going after everybody, rich and poor, and it’s really changing how people think about who they want to speak up for and stick up for them in local government.”

Higgins made clear that she believed the two primary drivers in the city’s election this year were the increasingly unaffordable cost of housing and Miami’s “long history of corruption” — a reference, perhaps, to the legal travails of outgoing Commissioner Joe Carollo, numerous police scandals or inquiries into alleged malfeasance by outgoing Mayor Francis Suarez, ex-Commissioner Alex Díaz de la Portilla and former City Attorney Victoria Méndez that, to date, have resulted in no official findings of wrongdoing.

As she did on the campaign trail, Higgins touted her work toward “building thousands of units of affordable housing.” She said housing affordability — inclusive of home prices, rent and property insurance — was her “top issue” leading up to Election Day.

But businesses are feeling the crunch too, she added.

“Our housing affordability crisis has existed for some time,” she said.

“You also have what’s going on with this tariff issue, which is raising prices at the grocery store, at the drug store and for small businesses. We forget about that. You can go into a hair salon (where) the price of extensions (has) gone up by $20. And do they cut their profits or do they charge their customers in Little Havana $20 more? Neither of those people can afford that. So, affordability is all over the map.”

Eileen Higgins defeated former City Manager Emilio González Tuesday to become Miami’s first woman Mayor and the first registered Democrat to win the job in nearly 30 years. She won with 59.5% of the vote.

Last year, Vice President Kamala Harris won Miami by less than a percentage point. Three years earlier, Suarez, a Republican, won re-election with 79% of the vote.