Recreational marijuana use became legal for adults in Maryland on Saturday, allowing residents 21 and older to purchase, use, possess and cultivate limited quantities of the substance.

Maryland residents voted for recreational cannabis use in a referendum in November’s election. Democrat Governor Wes Moore signed the Cannabis Reform Act into law in May.

Under the law, adults 21 and older will be allowed to grow up to two plants for their personal use and can possess up to 1.5 ounces of cannabis, which will be taxed at 9%, Fox 5 DC reported. Growing cannabis plants previously prompted legal consequences. But this new law lifted that restriction.

While the law now allows residents to buy, use and possess cannabis, its usage is limited to private residences, Maryland Cannabis Administration deputy director Dawn Berkowitz told WJZ. This means public smoking is still not permitted.

‘The purchase limit is the same as the possession limit for personal use. That includes up to 1.5 ounces of cannabis flower, 12 grams of concentrated cannabis or up to 750 mg of THC,’ Berkowitz said.

Possessing more than 1.5 but less than 2.5 ounces of cannabis could lead to civil fines and possession of more than 2.5 ounces could be considered an intent to distribute that could result in criminal charges, according to Berkowitz.

Convictions for marijuana-related crimes that were made legal under the new law will automatically be expunged, and those serving time for these offenses will be eligible for resentencing. People who were convicted of possession with the intent to distribute can petition the courts for expungement three years after finishing their sentences.

The state will also now permit companies to serve medical cannabis to customers. Nearly 100 dispensaries have been approved by state regulators to convert to dual licensees that will be permitted to serve patients and adult consumers under last year’s ballot measure.

‘We have been thinking for a long time that Americans across the country are going to choose cannabis, and we see 6 million people in Maryland, and we know it’s going to be a large business here,’ Ben Kovler, CEO and Founder of Green Thumb and RISE Dispensary, told Fox 5 DC.

The Maryland Cannabis Administration said last week that it approved 42 cultivators and manufacturers.

‘The Maryland Cannabis Administration, in collaboration with our industry partners, is excited to offer safer, legal, tested cannabis to adults in Maryland beginning on July 1,’ Maryland Cannabis Administration acting director Will Tilburg said in a press release. ‘We encourage adults to be informed about both the parameters of the new law and about safe and responsible cannabis consumption.’

Maryland joins more than 20 other states to legalize recreational marijuana for adults.

‘We are writing a new chapter in the story of cannabis in America. One that will lift communities harmed by criminalization and build a more competitive and more equitable economy,’ Moore said in a tweet on Saturday.

Cannabis is still illegal at the federal level and is prohibited in government buildings and other federal properties.

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Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, said Friday that he’s ‘living rent free in Donald’s head’ after former President Donald Trump shared a photo of him sleeping on a plane.

In a Friday morning post to Truth Social, Trump shared the photo and wrote, ‘Resting after a good 25 minutes of work!’

Pushing back on Trump’s comments, Christie shared the former president’s post in a tweet Friday evening and called for additional campaign donations.

‘Living rent free in Donald’s head. Make me a permanent resident. Donate today,’ wrote Christie, who previously sought the Republican nomination for president in 2016.

As the 2024 race for the White House intensifies, Republicans seeking their party’s nomination continue to beef up attacks against one another. But Christie, unlike many of his GOP counterparts in the election, has repeatedly taken aim at Trump.

Earlier this week, during an interview with Politico, Christie said Trump is ‘the cheapest S.O.B. I’ve ever met in my life’ and that what the former president ‘is good at is spending other people’s money.’

‘This is a billionaire who refused to pay his lawyers with his own personal money, and instead, men and women out there who believe in him and wanted [him] to be elected president are donating money to try to forward his candidacy… and he’s diverting that money to pay his own legal fees,’ Christie told the outlet of Trump on Tuesday.

Christie has also blamed Trump for Republican losses in recent elections, telling Fox News Channel’s ‘Fox and Friends’ this week that the ‘drama he’s created over the course of the last seven years for the Republican Party has just led to losing.’

‘Lost in ‘18 in the House, lost in ’20 in the Senate, lost the White House in ‘20, lost two more governorships in ’22 and a Senate seat in ‘22, and a real thin margin in the House,’ he said. ‘We see what that’s doing to us.’

Christie also said this month during an appearance on CNN’s ‘State of the Union’ that he ‘will do what I need to do to be up on that stage to try to save my party and save my country from going down the road of being led by three-time loser Donald Trump.’

‘Loser in 2018 by losing the House, loser in 2020 by losing the White House and the United States Senate, and the worst midterm performance we have seen in a long, long time, led by Donald Trump-selected candidates with Donald Trump as the main issue in many of those races. Loser, loser, loser,’ he said.

During a Wednesday evening appearance on ‘Fox News Tonight,’ Christie said he didn’t ‘want to vote for either one of them,’ referring to President Biden and Trump.

‘But you’re not closing the door to voting for him,’ host Lawrence Jones asked.

‘I’m saying I can’t support him,’ Christie responded.

‘You can’t?’ Jones asked.

‘I can’t support either one of them,’ Christie said. ‘Not Biden or Trump because they’re not competent and qualified to be president for different reasons – Joe Biden predominantly because of age and what we’ve seen on TV, and Donald Trump because I don’t believe he can win, Lawrence.’

Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Sonia Sotomayor are once again at odds over a major case concerning the First Amendment.

In a landmark 6-3 decision that pitted the interests of LGBTQ non-discrimination against First Amendment freedom, the Supreme Court on Friday held that a Colorado graphic designer who wants to make wedding websites does not have to create them for same-sex marriages.

The nation’s highest court ruled in favor of artist Lorie Smith, who sued the state of Colorado over its anti-discrimination law that prohibited businesses providing sales or other accommodations to the public from denying service based on a customer’s sexual orientation.

‘In this case, Colorado seeks to force an individual to speak in ways that align with its views but defy her conscience about a matter of major significance,’ Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in the court’s majority opinion. ‘But tolerance, not coercion, is our Nation’s answer. The First Amendment envisions the United States as a rich and complex place where all persons are free to think and speak as they wish, not as the government demands. Because Colorado seeks to deny that promise, the judgment is reversed.’

Smith has maintained throughout the case that she has no problem working with the LGBTQ community, just not for gay weddings.

Sotomayor dissented from the majority, along with Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, calling the ruling ‘a new license to discriminate’ and arguing that the ‘symbolic effect of the decision is to mark gays and lesbians for second-class status.’

The dissenting opinion argued that there ‘can be no social castes’ in a free and democratic society, suggesting that the majority’s decision would create such a reality.

Sotomayor, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, went on to falsely claim that the 2016 mass shooting at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, had been motivated by anti-gay prejudice. Court and phone records that emerged following the massacre revealed that anti-LGBTQ hatred had no apparent role in the gunman’s motivations.

Still, Sotomayor went on to mention various examples of anti-LGTBQ discrimination and violence in her opinion, seemingly arguing that the Supreme Court’s decision on Friday will create more hostility toward the LGBTQ community and lead to more hate crimes.

Gorsuch, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump, lambasted Sotomayor’s dissent, saying it ‘reimagines the facts’ from ‘top to bottom’ and fails to answer the fundamental question: ‘Can a State force someone who provides her own expressive services to abandon her conscience and speak its preferred message instead?’

Gorsuch went on to say that the dissent ‘gets so turned around about the facts that it opens fire on its own position,’ adding that it is ‘difficult to read the dissent and conclude we are looking at the same case.’

Friday wasn’t the first time that Gorsuch and Sotomayor had something of a war of words over a First Amendment decision. Last year, the Supreme Court ruled that a public school district couldn’t stop a football coach from praying on the 50-yard line after games.

In Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the Supreme Court held that preventing someone from engaging in such prayer as a personal religious observance violated the First Amendment’s protections of free speech and the free exercise of religion.

Sotomayor took issue with Gorsuch’s portrayal of the facts in the majority opinion, even taking the unusual step of including photos in her dissenting opinion that, in her view, undercut his summary of the case. She also seemed to accuse him of using misleading information.

‘To the degree the court portrays petitioner Joseph Kennedy’s prayers as private and quiet, it misconstrues the facts,’ wrote Sotomayor. ‘The record reveals that Kennedy had a longstanding practice of conducting demonstrative prayers on the 50-yard line of the football field. Kennedy consistently invited others to join his prayers and for years led student athletes in prayer at the same time and location. The court ignores this history. The court also ignores the severe disruption to school events caused by Kennedy’s conduct.’

Gorsuch began his opinion by stating that Kennedy had lost his job as a high school football coach ‘because he knelt at midfield after games to offer a quiet prayer of thanks.’ The opinion argued that Kennedy had prayed ‘during a period when school employees were free to speak with a friend, call for a reservation at a restaurant, check email, or attend to other personal matters. He offered his prayers quietly while his students were otherwise occupied. Still, the Bremerton School District disciplined him anyway.’

Gorsuch argued that the evidence showed that Kennedy had demonstrated that ‘his speech was private speech, not government speech.’

The two justices sparred in their dueling opinions over whether students had felt pressured to participate in the prayers.

That dispute followed the emergence of reports from early last year claiming that Gorsuch’s refusal to wear a face mask at Supreme Court arguments due to COVID had created tensions between him and Sotomayor. However, both justices released an unusual joint statement last January rebutting such claims.

‘Reporting that Justice Sotomayor asked Justice Gorsuch to wear a mask surprised us,’ the statement said. ‘It is false. While we may sometimes disagree about the law, we are warm colleagues and friends.’

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham faced an onslaught of boos as he stumped for former President Donald Trump at a rally in his home state of South Carolina Saturday, with supporters giving him a thumbs down as he left the stage.

‘Let me tell you how you win an election, folks,’ Graham told the crowd of Trump supporters in Pickens, South Carolina. ‘You get people together that don’t agree all of the time to agree on the most important things.’

‘My hope is we can bring this party together ’cause he’s gonna be our nominee,’ Graham continued amid a stream of soft booing from many in attendance. ‘He will be the nominee of the Republican Party, and let me tell you what’s at stake. If they win in 2024, they’re gonna pack the Supreme Court. So we need to get off our butts and make sure Donald Trump wins. If they win in 2024… Puerto Rico and D.C. will be states. Four Democrats for the rest of our lifetime. They’ll abolish the electoral college, they will turn this nation upside down.’

‘There’s one person running for president as a Republican that has the ability to change this country. It is Donald J. Trump. He did it once, he can do it again,’ he said. ‘I’m gonna help him all over this country, and folks, I am from South Carolina. He is gonna win South Carolina. This is the pathway to the presidency. God bless you all. God bless President Trump. God bless America.’

Immediately after his remarks, Graham paced to the left of the stage and exited among a roaring crowd of disgruntled Trump supporters who booed at the senator and gave him a thumbs down.

Graham, who spoke for about five minutes at the rally, was also booed when first took stage.

Once at the podium, Graham paused as the booing drowned out what he had to say.

‘Welcome to Pickens. … Thanks a bunch,’ he said. ‘Well, you wanna find something in common?’

As the booing continued, Graham told the crowd: ‘Calm down for just a second. I think you’ll like this. Pickens County has more Medal of Honor winners per capita than any place in the nation. I was born in this county. I live 15 miles down the road.’

‘This is a place where people pay the taxes, fight the wars and tell you what they believe,’ Graham said over the booing. ‘How many of you believe that Donald Trump was a great president?’

The crowd cheered at Graham’s remarks about Trump, but went right back to shouting down the senator and his remarks.

‘Without Donald Trump, there are no Donald Trump policies,’ Graham said. ‘He did something nobody else could do.’

Taking the stage a short time after Graham’s comments, Trump attempted to rally support for the senator, telling his supporters, ‘We’re gonna love him.’

Amid additional booing from the crowd, Trump said, ‘I know, it’s half-and-half. But when I need some of those liberal votes, he’s always there to help me get ’em, okay?’

‘We got some pretty liberal people, but he’s good,’ Trump added of Graham. ‘We know the good ones. We know the bad ones, too.’

Trump referenced Graham at a later point in the rally and was met with another round of booing. ‘I’m gonna have to work on these people,’ Trump said. He also offered to campaign for Graham when he is up for re-election.

Graham, who’s represented South Carolina in the U.S. Senate since 2003, has faced criticism from Trump supporters in recent years for his positions on a number of issues.

In 2021, as he waited to board a flight from the Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., Graham was swarmed by roughly a dozen people who called him a ‘traitor’ over his comments about Trump following the 2020 presidential election.

‘You know it was rigged,’ the individuals shouted to Graham at the time.

Graham’s position on the Russia-Ukraine war, which has been ongoing for well over a year, has also not been popular among Trump supporters and hardcore conservatives.

An ardent supporter of Ukraine’s defensive efforts, Graham traveled with Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut to Kyiv last summer.

During the meeting on the 134th day of the war, Zelenskyy, according to his office, ‘called on senators to back the decision on providing Ukraine with modern air defense systems.’ 

‘First of all, we appeal to you so that the Congress supports Ukraine in the matter of supplying modern air defense systems,’ Zelenskyy said. ‘We must ensure such a level of sky security that our people are not afraid to live in Ukraine.’

Fox News’ Greg Norman contributed to this report.

MANCHESTER, N.H. – It was an amusing moment on the presidential campaign trail that illustrates how influential a role Republican Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire is playing in the race for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.

As he introduced Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley at a New Hampshire GOP summer cookout and fundraiser this week, Sununu repeatedly praised the former two-term South Carolina governor, who later served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in former President Donald Trump’s administration.

But Sununu, who just a few weeks ago announced that he’d pass on his own presidential run, added that he’s not endorsing anyone ‘yet’ in the state’s presidential primary, emphasizing ‘we’ve got a long way to go’ until state’s 2024 nominating contest. 

After exchanging a hug, Haley kicked off her comments to the crowd by saying, ‘You’ve got a great governor.’

With a joke that elicited plenty of laughter, she said, ‘Governor, I very much worry about your health. What I’m thinking is, I don’t want you to over-stress. I don’t want you to get out there and do too much. So I think what’s best is, go ahead and endorse me now.’

Haley was kidding about Sununu’s health — but not about hoping to land the popular governor’s support in the state that holds the first primary and second overall contest in the GOP presidential nominating calendar.

She and five other contenders are former or current governors who have all worked alongside of Sununu. They and the six other Republican presidential candidates who are also challenging Trump for the GOP nomination have been calling Sununu, or meeting with him when they’re campaigning in New Hampshire, asking for his advice and suggestions, and maybe even for his support down the road.

‘He’s a great friend. He’s a great governor, and he’s going to be an important person in this primary. And I think that he’s got a lot of knowledge about the people of New Hampshire, and I think he’s got a lot of knowledge of what it takes to win here, so I think he’s going to be incredibly important,’ Haley told Fox News at the NHGOP cookout.

Besides Haley, in recent weeks former Vice President Mike Pence, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, ex-CIA spy and former Rep. Will Hurd of Texas and environmental lawyer and high-profile vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — who’s primary-challenging President Biden for the Democratic nomination — have all met with Sununu. And three other candidates — Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina and former Governors Chris Christie of New Jersey and Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas — huddled in-person with Sununu earlier this year.

‘Gov. Sununu’s importance in the New Hampshire primary cannot be underestimated. His endorsement and his general being an ambassador for the primary is going to be critically important in 2024,’ longtime New Hampshire Institute of Politics executive director Neil Levesque told Fox News.

Sununu is more modest.

‘I try to be open and helpful to everybody. So, I don’t think I’m the man in demand. I think everyone knows that I’m willing to help and give good advice and guidance in terms of what they’re doing, next steps, who to meet, where to go, how to approach the state.’

Sununu, who’s in his fourth two-year term steering New Hampshire, added in a Fox Digital interview, ‘I do know how to win the state and be successful here, and I’m happy to share any advice I can with all the different candidates.’

‘They ask good advice. They ask good questions. How they should approach the state. How they should approach the voters,’ Sununu said of the Republican presidential contenders. ‘I’m kind of happy to give all the advice we can. I think we know how to do retail politics and retail management here and how it translates to the electorate.’

And he’s giving the candidates good grades at this point, saying, ‘I think so far, they’re doing it the right way. They’re going to the backyard barbeque, and they’re going to the diners to meet people on the citizens’ terms, not on the candidates’ terms, which is what I think defines New Hampshire really apart from everybody else.’

Unlike Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa, another popular chief executive who’s playing a similar role in the 2024 GOP nomination race in the first caucus state, Sununu has said he’s open to making an endorsement ahead of the primary.

Asked about his timetable, the governor said, ‘We haven’t even gotten to a debate yet. We’re just getting to see who all the candidates are. A lot of them are still getting in the race as of last week. There’s still a lot to play out in terms of endorsements and where that goes.’

One person Sununu won’t endorse, and who isn’t asking the governor for advice, is former President Donald Trump, who’s the commanding front-runner right now in the Republican race as he makes his third straight White House run.

Sununu has been highly critical of Trump dating back to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters who unsuccessfully tried to prevent congressional certification of President Biden’s 2020 election victory. Sununu has repeatedly predicted that the former president has no chance of winning back his old job in 2024.

As for his own political future, Sununu has yet to announce whether he’ll seek an unprecedented fifth term as governor.

Asked about his timetable to decide on a 2024 re-election run, the governor pointed to his wife, Valerie, and three children and told Fox News, ‘I’ll talk to Valerie and the kids and stuff over the holiday weekend and probably come to some sort of firm and public decision sometime in July, August, something like that.’

A record number of 40-year-olds in the United States have never been married, and most of them are living alone, according to a new analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data.

The Pew Research Center analyzed Census Bureau data from 2021 and found 25% of 40-year-olds that year had never been married, a sharp increase from 20% in 2010. Many of these individuals lived alone, with just 22% of never-married adults ages 40 to 44 reporting last year that they cohabitated with a romantic partner.

The 2021 data marks a new peak in what’s been a decades-long trend. The share of unmarried 40-year-olds has steadily been increasing since 1980, when just 6% of them had never been married.

According to the data, a higher share of men than women had never married, and Black 40-year-olds were much more likely to have never married than Hispanic, White, and Asian 40-year-olds. Education also seemed to play an important factor, as 40-year-olds without a four-year college degree were more likely to have never married than those who had completed at least a bachelor’s degree.

‘The overall decrease in the share of 40-year-olds who have married is especially notable because the share of 40-year-olds who had completed at least a bachelor’s degree was much higher in 2021 than in 1980 (39% vs. 18%),’ Richard Fry, a senior researcher for Pew, wrote in a summary of the findings. ‘More-highly educated 40-year-olds are more likely to have married, but the growth of this group has not reversed the overall trend of delaying or forgoing marriage.’

Pew conducted the analysis to examine how marriage rates have changed among 40-year-olds in the U.S. from 1850 to 2021. The data revealed a growing trend of delaying marriage or foregoing it altogether among people born during or after the 1960s.

Pew’s findings echo those of the University of Virginia’s National Marriage Project, which found in a report last year that the median age of a first marriage has increased over the last 50 years, ‘from 23 in 1970 to about 30 in 2021 for men, and from 21 in 1970 to 28 in 2021 for women.’

The study noted a later marriage doesn’t necessarily mean a better one, reporting that 81% of husbands who married earlier said they were satisfied in their marriages, compared to just 71% of those who married later. As for women, 73% of women who married earlier were satisfied, compared to 70% of later-married women.

Fry told CNN that the Pew report focused on 40-year-olds to reflect the fact that adults tend to ‘take stock of their lives at the start of a new decade of life,’ noting a connection between fertility and marriage. ‘Some women may want to have children in the context of marriage. Since fertility wanes after the age of 40, 40 is an appropriate age to document marriage outcomes.’

According to Census Bureau data, less than 1 in 5 adults had not tried marriage by age 40 in all prior generations of American adults.

However, Fry noted in Pew’s analysis that people do marry for the first time late in life.

‘To be sure, we can’t assume that if someone has not married by age 40, they never will,’ he wrote. ‘In fact, about one-in-four 40-year-olds who had not married in 2001 had done so by age 60. If that pattern holds, a similar share of today’s never-married 40-year-olds will marry in the coming decades.’

In a separate report from last month, Pew noted that young adults are reaching key life milestones later than earlier generations, such as achieving a full-time job, financial independence, independent living, and parenthood.

The report comes amid a decline in U.S. birth and marriage rates that’s been underway for decades. Earlier this month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that just under 3.7 million babies were born in the U.S. last year, about 3,000 fewer than in 2021.

The CDC also found that birthrates for teens and young women hit record lows since peaking in 1991. Specifically, the U.S. teen birth rate fell by 3% from 2021 to an all-time low last year.