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By CNN’s Logan Schiciano

(CNN) — Betty Reid Soskin, who was the National Park Service’s oldest active ranger when she retired at age 100, has died. She was 104.

She passed away “peacefully” at her home in Richmond, California on Sunday, according to a statement from her family.

“Thank you for your service, Ranger Betty,” the NPS wrote in a social media post marking Soskin’s death.

Soskin became a NPS ranger in later life, serving full-time at Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond from 2011 to 2022. She played a key role educating visitors on the work of Black Americans on the home front during World War II.

“It was her opportunity to tell her story,” one of Soskin’s sons, Bob Reid, told CNN. “There were waiting lists to hear her presentations, where she would give her perspective. I think that was probably the heart of her work.”

Reid described his mother as a “trailblazer.”

She grew up in Oakland, California, and worked as a file clerk in a segregated union hall during World War II, according to the NPS. That experience allowed her to bring a unique perspective to her duties, Reid said.

“Being a primary source in the sharing of that history – my history – and giving shape to a new national park has been exciting and fulfilling,” Soskin said when she retired from the NPS. “It has proven to bring meaning to my final years.”

Soskin’s life was “multifaceted,” according to Reid. She and her husband founded one of the first Black-owned music stores in California, Reid’s Records. She also spent stints as an office worker and political staffer.

Her time as a field representative for a California state assembly member brought her to meetings where the management plan for the park where she would later work was developed.

While representing that state at the table and sharing her story, NPS saw Soskin “as a valuable resource in building the park,” Reid said. “They convinced her to become a park ranger.”

The role made Soskin a local celebrity, and she eventually caught the eye of the White House. She introduced then-President Barrack Obama at a tree-lighting ceremony in 2016, where Obama gave her the presidential coin.

Soskin’s namesake will live on through the Betty Reid Soskin Middle School in El Sobrante, California. The school called Soskin a “national treasure” in a statement after her death, and said her “legacy of resilience, wisdom, and unwavering commitment to justice will forever inspire our community.”

Soskin published the book “Sign My Name to Freedom: A Memoir of a Pioneering Life” in 2018. A documentary on her life was in the works at the time of her passing.

CNN’s Zoe Sottile contributed to this report.

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El espíritu navideño llegó al agua este fin de semana durante el Ventura Harbor Santa Paddle, donde Santa Claus cambió su trineo por una tabla de paddle.

Acompañado por decenas de participantes disfrazados, Santa recorrió el puerto en un ambiente festivo y lleno de diversión. Quienes no contaban con su propia tabla pudieron rentar paddle boards a través de Ventura Boat Rentals.

Para garantizar la seguridad de todos los asistentes, la Patrulla del Puerto acompañó el recorrido durante todo el evento.

La actividad atrajo a familias y visitantes que disfrutaron de una manera única y activa de celebrar la temporada navideña en Ventura Harbor.

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By Lisa Respers France, CNN

(CNN) — Back in 2020, Nicki Minaj said she was “not gonna jump on the Trump bandwagon” after years calling out his anti-immigration politics. Five years later, she’s singing the president’s praises as a full-throated MAGA supporter. What gives?

The rapper was effusive in her praise for Trump during an interview this weekend by Erika Kirk, the widow of slain conservative figure Charlie Kirk, at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest convention held in Phoenix, Arizona. She called him “handsome” and “dashing” and also shared her admiration for Vice President JD Vance.

“I love both of them,” Minaj said. “Both of them have a very uncanny ability to be someone that you relate to.”

She was rewarded by praise from Vance, who said on X that Minaj “said something at Amfest that was really profound.” She has been reveling in the attention, reposting a claim that she has gained more than 100,000 followers amid her newfound MAGA support.

The world looked very different 15 years ago, when Minaj used Trump, then a private citizen and reality TV star, as an example of misogyny against women in the entertainment industry.

During a scene for the MTV documentary “My Time Now,” which traced Minaj’s roots from her native Trinidad and Tobago to superstar rapper, she offered up her thoughts on how assertive women are viewed as “b**ches” as opposed to men who are thought of as powerful for the same behavior.

“Donald Trump can say ‘You’re fired.’ Let Martha Stewart run her company the same way and be the same way!’” she said, invoking Trump’s catch phrase from the hit NBC reality show “The Apprentice.” “But Donald Trump, he gets to hang out with young [expletive] and have 50 different wives and just be cool.”

Minaj had mixed feelings when Billboard asked her in 2015 how she felt about Trump’s surging presidential campaign.

“There are points he has made that may not have been so horrible if his approach wasn’t so childish,” she said at the time. “But in terms of entertainment — I think he’s hilarious. I wish they could just film him running for president. That’s the ultimate reality show.”

She took a decidedly more critical view the following year, in a freestyle remix released in November 2016, the same month Trump was elected to his first term as president.

“Island girl, Donald Trump want me go home,” she rapped on “Black Barbies,” a freestyle remix of Rae Sremmurd’s “Black Beatles.”

Minaj, who was born Onika Tanya Maraj in Trinidad and Tobago in December 1982, has been open about coming to the United States as an undocumented child. In an emotional social media post in 2018, she called out the separation of families at the border during Trump’s first administration.

“I came to this country as an illegal immigrant. I can’t imagine the horror of being in a strange place & having my parents stripped away from me at the age of 5,” she reportedly wrote in the caption of a photo showing young children separated from their parents at the border being detained. (Minaj deactivated her main Instagram account in October 2025.)

“This is so scary to me. Please stop this,” she wrote. “Can you try to imagine the terror & panic these kids feel right now? Not knowing if their parents are dea