News

New year, new dates to lock into the calendar now.

Here's what to look forward to in Phoenix in 2023.

The Phoenix City Council might need a bigger dais soon.

What's happening: The council voted Wednesday to start the formal council redistricting process. During their discussion, four council members — Deb Stark, Jim Waring, Carlos Garcia and Sal DiCiccio — asked staff to look at adding more districts.

Phoenix Rising opened its preseason camp Sunday with three players who made the cut during open tryouts a week earlier:

• Skylar Odle, a 17-year-old goalkeeper who's played with the U.S. Youth Soccer's Blackhawks team in Scottsdale.

Former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords displayed her inextinguishable optimism in a New York Times interview published earlier this week about her continued fight for gun safety legislation.

Flashback: On Jan. 8, 2011, a gunman shot Giffords at point-blank range as she greeted constituents at a "Congress on your Corner" event at a Safeway outside Tucson.

Arizona enters Black History Month with no official critical race theory ban but with a political landscape that could still restrict how teachers build curriculum around race.

Why it matters: Pushes for so-called CRT bans in states with conservative legislatures, including Arizona, have led some educators to scrap once-noncontroversial Black history lessons over fears of firing and social media shaming, Axios' Russell Contreras reports from a new RAND Corporation survey.

California was the lone holdout on a proposed framework that six of the seven Colorado River basin states submitted to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation on Monday; but the plan could still be influential as the feds determines how to apportion water cutbacks that everyone will take.

Driving the news: Tuesday was the deadline for the seven basin states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — to reach an agreement.

Thousands of Philadelphia Eagles fans will flock to the Valley next week, likely bringing some of their unique antics with them.

State of play: Eagles fans like to climb light poles to celebrate significant sports victories.

All eyes will be on the Valley next weekend as it hosts the Super Bowl for the fourth time.

• But that attention comes with an increased likelihood of public safety threats.