The Phoenix City Council is poised to crack down on organizations that provide food and medical aid to unhoused people in parks.

Why it matters: Homeless people often suffer from lack of medical care and food, and the proposed ordinance would make it more difficult to provide them.

• Supporters of the proposal argue that services result in unsanitary and sometimes unsafe conditions from waste like needles.

Zoom in: The Medical Treatment and Food Distribution in Parks Ordinance would require providers to get permits from the Park Department.

• Each of the city's 105 eligible parks would be limited to two permits monthly.
• Needle exchange programs would be prohibited.
• Violations would be a class 1 misdemeanor, which is punishable by up to six months in jail and a $2,500 fine.

Catch up quick: An original version of the ordinance, which the council approved 8-1 in December, only restricted medical care in parks.

• Council members delayed the effective date to March 30 to get community input.
• The council later delayed the effective date until June, then proposed a revised version in late March that restricted both medical care and food distribution.

State of play: The City Council directed staff to develop and revise the ordinance in response to concerns from residents, parks department spokesperson Teleia Galaviz told Axios.

Anna Hernandez, the only council member to vote against the ordinance in December, called on her colleagues to repeal and reject it at a press conference Monday, saying they should work with providers to craft a policy that addresses community concerns while allowing services to continue.

• Circle the City CEO Kim Despres told Axios that her organization won't apply for permits to provide medical care if the revised ordinance passes because it doesn't want to take them from groups that provide food.

The other side: The city can support people in need "without placing that burden on our families and neighborhoods," Council Member Betty Guardado said in a statement to Axios.

• "Our residents have worked too hard to reclaim and improve our parks to see that progress undone," she said.

What's next: The City Council will vote on the revised ordinance on Wednesday.

Go deeper

Grand Canyon University could become the next law school in Arizona.

Why it matters: Arizona has just two American Bar Association-accredited law schools — ASU's Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law and U of A's James E. Rogers College of Law.

• ASU is the only option in the Valley.

State of play: The private Christian university is seeking an "inaugural dean" for a new college of law, per a posting on LinkedIn.

• The dean would be responsible for "providing vision, strategic direction, and operational excellence across all aspects of the college," which would include accreditation, academic planning, faculty recruitment, performance assessment, research and scholarly development and program review.

Yes, but: The jury's still out as to whether GCU will actually create a college of law, spokesperson Bob Romantic told Axios.

• "There is nothing official at this point but we are exploring that possibility. Hiring someone with additional expertise in that area is part of that process," he said, adding that GCU has spent the past decade aggressively expanding its academic offerings.
• GCU has no timeline for when a decision will be made.

Of note: GCU already offers a legal studies degree.

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We asked you last month if or how you're engaging with AI. You had lots of thoughts.

• The responses ran the gamut from "it's basically the ultimate reference library" to "this is a tool made for the Anti-Christ."

Zoom in: Some of your responses stuck with us — and made us think harder about what this tool is becoming.

"I don't know how I lived without it. I use it every day, for everything from summarizing and correlating medical test results and prescriptions … to identifying what a particular tool is and its purpose, to analyzing home maintenance and repair issues."

"Where my opinions can differ with others in my [software engineering] field is how hard to push for the use of AI in agentic workflows — automating decision-making, and the like. These use cases have a lot more security implications anytime there's a desire to 'remove the human from the loop.'"

"As we rely on it more and more, the more the lines will blur between actual human interaction and ingenuity into what is AI-supplemented or completely AI-generated. I expect 'no-AI zones' might become a thing, where in-person experiences will become even more cherished, which is an encouraging thought for humanity."