What a Monday night to remember for the Scott brothers, Nolan and Maxwell. In a basketball game matching perhaps the top two public school teams in Orange County, Corona del Mar and Los Alamitos went back and forth, with neither wanting to budge.
Corona del Mar (17-1) got the ball under Los Alamitos’ basket with 11.2 seconds left and down by one point. Coach Jason Simco, who had never beaten Los Alamitos in five seasons, set up a final play that was designed to get the ball to the least likely person, Nolan Scott, a sophomore linebacker for the football team. Brother Maxwell set a screen for him, Luke Mirhashemi found Nolan wide open under the basket and passed him the ball for an easy layup with 4.3 seconds left, delivering a 78-77 victory in a Sunset League game at Los Alamitos’ newly opened gym.
Maxwell Scott finished with 35 points. The brothers have been playing together since flag football days as second-graders. Maxwell played football as a freshman and then focused on basketball, but he is set to return to football as a senior.
“It’s fun to play with him,” Maxwell said.
What a game it was.
“Everyone was making shots,” Maxwell said.
Corona del Mar’s successful final shot took away a magnificent performance from Los Alamitos sophomore Isaiah Williamson, who finished with 26 points.
“I think he was amazing,” Simco said of Williamson. “He’s going to be something else.”
American Reich: A Murder in Orange County, Neo-Nazis, and a New Age of Hate
By Eric Lichtblau Little Brown and Company: 352 pages, $30
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Have you heard of Orange County? It’s where the good Republicans go before they die.
It should come as no surprise that Orange County, a beloved county for the grandfather of modern American conservatism, Ronald Reagan, would be the fertile landscape for far-right ideology and white supremacy. Reaganomics aside, the O.C. has long since held a special if not slightly off-putting place, of oceanfront leisure, modern luxury and all-American family entertainment — famed by hit shows (“The Real Housewives of Orange County,” “The O.C.” and “Laguna Beach,” among others). Even crime in Orange County has been sensationalized and glamorized, with themes veneered by opulence, secrecy and illusions of suburban perfection. To Eric Lichtblau, the Pulitzer Prize winner and former Los Angeles Times reporter, the real story is far-right terrorism — and its unspoken grip on the county’s story.
“One of the reasons I decided to focus on Orange County is that it’s not the norm — not what you think of as the Deep South. It’s Disneyland. It’s California,” Lichtblau says. “These are people who are trying to take back America from the shores of Orange County because it’s gotten too brown in their view.”
His newest investigative book, “American Reich,” focuses on the 2018 murder of gay Jewish teenager Blaze Bernstein as a lens to examine Orange County and how the hate-driven murder at the hands of a former classmate connects to a national web of white supremacy and terrorism.
I grew up a few miles away from Bernstein, attending a performing arts school similar to his — and Sam Woodward’s. I remember the early discovery of the murder where Woodward became a suspect, followed by the news that the case was being investigated as a hate crime. The murder followed the news cycle for years to come, but in its coverage, there was a lack of continuity in seeing how this event fit into a broader pattern and history ingrained in Orange County. There was a bar down the street from me where an Iranian American man was stabbed just for not being white. The seaside park of Marblehead, where friends and I visited for homecoming photos during sunset, was reported as a morning meet-up spot for neo-Nazis in skeleton masks training for “white unity” combat. These were just some of the myriad events Lichtblau explores as symptoms of something more unsettling than one-offs.
Samuel Lincoln Woodward, of Newport Beach, speaks with his attorney during his 2018 arraignment on murder charges in the death of Blaze Bernstein.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Lichtblau began the book in 2020, in the midst of COVID. He wanted to find a place emblematic of the national epidemic that he, like many others, was witnessing — some of the highest record of anti-Asian attacks, assaults on Black, Latino and LGBTQ+ communities, and rising extremist rhetoric and actions.
“Orange County kind of fit a lot of those boxes,” Lichtblau says. “The horrible tragedy with Blaze Bernstein being killed by one of his high school classmates — who had been radicalized — reflected a growing brazenness of the white supremacy movement we’ve seen as a whole in America in recent years.”
Bernstein’s death had been only two years prior. The Ivy League student had agreed to meet former classmate Woodward one evening during winter break. The two had never been close; Woodward had been a lone wolf during his brief time at the Orange County School of the Arts, before transferring due to the school’s liberalness. On two separate occasions over the years, Woodward had reached out to Bernstein under the pretense of grappling with his own sexuality. Bernstein had no idea he was being baited, or that his former classmate was part of a sprawling underground network of far-right extremists — connected to mass shooters, longtime Charles Manson followers, neo-Nazi camps, and online chains where members bonded over a shared fantasy of harming minorities and starting a white revolution.
“But how is this happening in 2025?”
These networks didn’t appear out of nowhere. They had long been planted in Orange County’s soil, leading back to the early 1900s when the county was home to sprawling orange groves.
Mexican laborers, who formed the backbone of the orange-grove economy (second to oil and generating wealth that even rivaled the Gold Rush), were met with violence when the unionized laborers wanted to strike for better conditions. The Orange County sheriff, also an orange grower, issued an order. “SHOOT TO KILL, SAYS SHERIFF,” the banner headline in the Santa Ana Register read. Chinese immigrants also faced violence. They had played a large role in building the county’s state of governance, but were blamed for a case of leprosy, and at the suggestion of a councilman, had their community of Chinatown torched while the white residents watched.
Gideon Bernstein and Jeanne Pepper Bernstein, center, parents of Blaze Bernstein, speak during a news conference after a 2018 sentencing for Samuel Woodward at Orange County Superior Court.
(Jeff Gritchen/Pool / Orange County Register)
Leading up to the new millennium brought an onslaught of white power rock coming out of the county’s music scene. Members with shaved heads and Nazi memorabilia would dance to rage-fueled declarations of white supremacy, clashing, if not worse, with non-white members of the community while listening to lyrics like, “When the last white moves out of O.C., the American flag will leave with me… We’ll die for a land that’s yours and mine” (from the band Youngland).
“It’s come and gone,” says Lichtblau, who noticed these currents shifting in the early 2000s — and over the years, when Reagandland broke in certain parts to become purple. Even with sights of blue amid red, Trump on the landscape brought a new wave — one that Lichtblau explains was fueled by “claiming their country back” and “capturing the moment that Trump released.”
It can be hard to fathom the reality: that the Orange County of white supremacy exists alongside an Orange County shaped both economically and culturally by its immigrant communities, where since 2004, the majority of its residents are people of color. Then again, to anyone who has spent considerable time there, you’ll notice the strange cognitive dissonance among its cultural landscape.
It’s a peculiar sight to see a MAGA stand selling nativist slogans on a Spanish-named street, or Confederate flags in the back of pickup trucks pulling into the parking lots of neighborhood taquerias or Vietnamese pho shops for a meal. Or some of the families who have lived in the county for generations still employing Latino workers, yet inside their living rooms Fox News will be playing alarmist rhetoric about “Latinos,” alongside Reagan-era memorabilia proudly displayed alongside framed Bible verses. This split reality — a multicultural community and one of the far-right — oddly fills the framework of a county born from a split with its neighbor, L.A., only to develop an aggressive identity against said neighbor’s perceived liberalness.
It’s this cultural rejection that led to “the orange curtain” or the “Orange County bubble,” which suggest these racially-charged ideologies stay contained or, exhaustingly, echo within the county’s sphere. On the contrary, Lichtblau has seen how these white suburban views spill outward. Look no further than the U.S. Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6, also the book’s release date.
While popular belief might assume these insurrectionists came from deeply conservative areas, it was actually the contrary, as Lichtblau explains. “It was from places like Orange County,” he says, “where the voting patterns were seeing the most shift.” Some might argue — adamantly or reluctantly — that Jan. 6 was merely a stop-the-steal protest gone wrong, a momentary lapse or mob mentality. But Lichtblau sees something much larger. “This was white pride on display. There was a lot of neo-Nazi stuff, including a lot of Orange County people stuff.”
As a society, it’s been collectively decided to expect the profile of the lone wolf killer, the outcast, wearing an identity strung from the illusions of a white man’s oppression — the type to rail against unemployment benefits but still cash the check. Someone like Sam Woodward, cut from the vestiges of the once venerable conservative Americana family, the type of God-fearing Christians who, as “American Reich” studies in the Woodward household, teach and bond over ideological hate, and even while entrenched in a murder case, continuously reach out to the victim’s family to the point where the judge has to intervene. The existence of these suburban families is known, as is the slippery hope one will never cross paths with them in this ever-spinning round of American roulette. But neither these individuals nor their hate crimes are random, as Lichtblau discusses, and the lone wolves aren’t as alone as assumed. These underground channels have long been ingrained in the American groundscape like landmines, now reactivated by a far-right digital landscape that connects these members and multiplies their ideologies on a national level. Lichtblau’s new investigation goes beyond the paradigm of Orange County to show a deeper cultural epidemic that’s been taking shape.
Beavin Pappas is an arts and culture writer. Raised in Orange County, he now splits his time between New York and Cairo, where he is at work on his debut book.
When Virginia Guevara moved into a studio apartment in Orange County in 2024 after nearly a decade of homelessness, she needed far more than a roof and a bed.
Scattered visits to free clinics notwithstanding, Guevara hadn’t had a full medical checkup in years. She required dental work. She wanted to start looking for a job. And she was overwhelmed by the maze of paperwork needed simply to get her off the street, much less to make any of the other things happen.
But Guevara had help. The Jamboree Housing Corp., an affordable-housing nonprofit that renovated a former hotel in Stanton that Guevara now calls home, didn’t just move her in — it also provided her a fleet of wraparound services. Jamboree counselors helped Guevara navigate the healthcare system to see a doctor and a dentist, buy a few things for her apartment, and get training to become a caregiver.
“I was years on the street before I got the kind of help I needed so I could help myself,” said Guevara, 68.
Amid the Trump administration’s apparent opposition to using Medicaid funding for such social services, staffers at Jamboree and similar affordable-housing providers in California have feared losing federal money. The experimental waivers that provide the primary funding for the program expire at the end of 2026. But as it turns out, the state had the foresight several years ago to designate certain nonhousing social services — such as mental health care, drug counseling and job training — as a form of Medicaid spending that will continue to be reimbursed.
Catherine Howden, a spokesperson for the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, confirmed that California’s use of the “in lieu of services” classification for these wraparound programs is allowed under federal regulations.
“It is starting to sound positive that we will, at the very least, be able to continue billing for these services after the waiver period,” said Natalie Reider, a senior vice president at Jamboree Housing.
During President Trump’s first term, states were permitted to use Medicaid money for social support services not typically covered by health insurance. But the second Trump administration is reeling that policy back in, saying that the intervening Biden administration took the supportive services process too far. Howden said in a statement that the policy “distracted the Medicaid program from its core mission: providing excellent health outcomes for vulnerable Americans.”
Through CalAIM, a five-year experimental build-out of the Medicaid system, programs such as Jamboree were able to leverage federal funding to offer the kinds of nonhousing social services that experts contend are essential to keeping people permanently housed.
However, these wraparound services are only one component of the CalAIM initiative, which is attempting to take Medicaid, known as Medi-Cal in California, in a more holistic direction across all areas of care. And when CalAIM launched, California officials gave the programs the Medicaid “in lieu of services” designation, known as ILOS, in effect putting them outside the waiver process and ensuring that even when CalAIM sunsets, money for those social initiatives will continue to flow.
“California has tried to future-proof many of the policy changes it has made in Medi-Cal by including them in mechanisms like ILOS that do not require federal waiver approval,” said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News. “That allows these policy changes to continue, even with a politically hostile federal administration.”
The designation allows these social services to be funded through Medicaid managed-care plans under existing federal laws because they are cost-effective substitutes for a Medicaid service or reduce the likelihood of patients needing other Medicaid-covered healthcare services, said Glenn Tsang, policy advisor for homelessness and housing at the state’s Department of Health Care Services. The state could not provide an estimate of the annual funding for these wraparound services because they are not distinguished from other payments made to Medicaid managed-care plans.
“We are full steam ahead with these services,” Tsang said, “and they are authorized.”
Although California was the first state to incorporate the designation for such housing and other health-related social support, Tsang said, several other states — including Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, New York and North Carolina — are now using the mechanism in a similar fashion.
Paul San Felipe, senior program manager for Jamboree, speaks during a meeting at Clara Vista in Stanton on Dec. 29, 2025.
(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)
Early results suggest such support saves on healthcare spending. When Jamboree, MidPen Housing Corp. in Northern California, RH Community Builders in the Central Valley and other permanent supportive housing providers employ a holistic approach that includes social services, they reported higher rates of formerly homeless people remaining in housing, less frequent use of costly emergency health services, and more residents landing jobs that help them pay rent and stay housed.
At the nonprofit MidPen Housing, which serves 12 counties in and around the San Francisco Bay Area, roughly 40% of the units in the program’s pipeline are earmarked for “extremely low-income” people, a group that includes those who are homeless, said Danielle McCluskey, senior director of resident services.
CalAIM reimbursements help fund the part of MidPen that focuses on supportive services across a wide range of experiences, such as chronic homelessness, mental health issues and those leaving the foster care system. McCluskey described it as one leg of a three-legged stool, the others being real estate development and property management.
“If any of those legs are not getting what they need, if they’re not funded or not staffed or resourced, then that stool is kind of wobbly — off-kilter,” the director said.
A recent state evaluation found that people who used at least one of the housing support services — including navigation into new housing, healthcare assistance and a deposit to secure an apartment — saw a 13% reduction in emergency department visits and a 24% reduction in inpatient admissions in the six months that followed.
Documenting those outcomes is crucial because the department needs to show federal officials that the services lessen the need for other, often costlier Medicaid-covered care — the essence of the classification.
Advocates for the inclusion of supportive services argue that the American system ultimately saves money on those investments. As California’s homeless population has soared in recent years to more than 187,000 on a given night — nearly a quarter of the U.S. total — Jamboree has been allocating more of its resources to permanent supportive housing.
Founded in 1990 in Orange County, Jamboree builds various types of affordable housing using federal, state and private funding. Reider said about a fifth of the organization’s portfolio is dedicated to permanent supportive housing.
“They’re not going back out to the streets. They’re not going to jail. They’re not going to the hospitals,” Reider said. “Keeping people housed is the No. 1 outcome, and it is the cost-saver, right? We’re using Medicaid dollars, but we’re saving the system money in the long run.”
Guevara spent years living out of her truck before a shelter worker connected her with Jamboree. Now she also has found work as a caregiver.
(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)
Guevara, who wound up on the streets after a falling-out with family in 2015, spent years living out of her truck before a shelter worker connected her with Jamboree. There, she was paired with a specialist to help her figure out how to get and see a doctor, and to keep up with scheduling the battery of medical tests she needed after years spent living in temporary shelters.
“I also got a job developer, who helped me get this job with the county so I can pay my rent,” Guevara said of her position as a part-time in-home caregiver. “Now I take care of people kind of the same way people have been taking care of me.”
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism.
