Transcript of School Shooting in Bend, Elon Musk's Power, MN Senate Race

The grief at an elementary school in Bend, Oregon, is mixed with gratitude for the teacher and the dad who stopped a massacre.

Police in Bend shared details about that school shooting.

I'm Ayesha Rascoe.

And I'm Scott Simon, and this is Up First from NPR News.

Candlelight vigils honor the dead from an elementary school shooting and the bravery of the people who stopped it.

A new film about Elon Musk tries to puzzle out how he got so powerful. We talked to one of the producers.

And a surprisingly competitive Senate race in the normally blue state of Minnesota is making Democrats nervous.

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Authorities are continuing to investigate a shooting at an elementary school in Bend, Oregon, this past Thursday. 3 children and 1 teacher were killed. 2 others, a 7-year-old child and a 54-year-old teacher, are being treated for injuries.

NPR criminal justice correspondent Jacqueline Diaz has been following the story and joins us now. Jacqueline, thanks for being with us. Yeah, thank you for having And officials have shared new details about how the shooting apparently unfolded. What do we know?

Yeah, during a press briefing yesterday, police in Bend, Oregon, laid out the series of events leading up to the shooting at Silver Rail Elementary School. It started around 1 p.m. That's when a bystander in a red pickup truck spotted the shooter climbing a fence onto school property with a shotgun. The bystander confronted him, and the gunman shot at the truck multiple times. That man called 911. Meanwhile, the gunman made way to the building. The doors were locked, but he was able to get inside after he fired multiple rounds at the doors. A second bystander, a father of 2 children at the school, saw the shooting that unfolded moments earlier and pulled into the school parking lot. He grabbed his gun, which police say he carried in his car legally, and he followed the suspect into the school, shot and killed him. He's being hailed as a hero. His mother read a statement to reporters identifying him as lifelong Bend resident Caleb Giammanco and said he asked for privacy during this difficult time. Amid this chaos, there was yet another person who tried to stop the gunman. Here's Bend Police Chief Mike Krantz at yesterday's news conference.

A teacher in the classroom threw her cell phone at the suspect and then tackled him and fought to take the firearm from him. She was not injured in that incident, but she almost certainly helped prevent more bloodshed.

So as you can tell, there were multiple people who intervened here to try to stop this attack from becoming any worse than it was.

Jacqueline, what have we learned about the shooter?

Well, he was 16 years old, and he was formerly a student in the school's special education program. This is notable because the shooting took place in a special education classroom. Police identified him as Griffin J. John II. They say he used a Maverick 88, which is a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun. Authorities say they've searched his home and they're continuing to conduct interviews. After the shooting, police say they found the suspect's backpack at the scene and 44 more rounds And I understand not all the victims have been named publicly, but tell us, please, about them. Yeah, 3 children aged 5, 8, and 11 were killed. The 5-year-old was a boy named Rome Summer. Officials did not release the names of the other child victims at the request of their families. The teacher who was killed was 25-year-old Megan Lambert. She was from Bend. She had a passion for sports. She was a volleyball coach. Her family released a statement that officials read at Friday's briefing. They said the job at Silver Rail was her first teaching role and it was her dream job. Here's police spokesperson Sheila Miller reading from the family statement: Megan was compassionate and had a huge heart.

She always fought for the underdog and those with special needs. She was an incredible sister, daughter, niece, and granddaughter. The family says she was funny and opinionated and that she lit up the room.

And watching the case, Jacqueline, what'll you be watching for next?

Right. So authorities say this is very much an active criminal investigation and that it will take time. We're expecting more details to emerge about the shooter. Law enforcement officials will no doubt be looking more into who he was and what might have led him to carry out this horrible shooting. Also, the police chief said the weapon came from the shooter's home, but one question authorities are still digging into is how the teen got the gun. In the meantime, officials say hundreds of residents have already shown up at a local library to meet with crisis counselors NPR's Jacqueline Diaz, thanks so much. Thank you.

Elon Musk has spent at least $276 million on campaign donations to Republicans, but that's just a fraction of Musk's overall wealth, around 0.03%. The power of that kind of money is hard to understand in technology, finance, and politics. He has business ventures in space, AI, electric vehicles, and even, he showed off this week, flying cars.

You know, I'm not sure it's necessarily legal in all jurisdictions, so it's going to be pretty wild that you can have a rocket car.

We're joined now by Ronan Farrow. He's an investigative reporter and contributing writer to The New Yorker and helped produce a new documentary about Elon Musk called Musk. Mr. Farrow, thanks for being with us.

Thanks for having me.

This week, Elon Musk's Starshield military communication service was briefly restricted in Ukraine. He says any decision would have come from the Pentagon, not his company. But does this remind us how dominant SpaceX is in the field? And should that be a concern?

Absolutely. A few years ago, I reported in The New Yorker on U.S. officials who were expressing alarm that the US government had let one man become infrastructure, Starlink for Ukraine's army, SpaceX for NASA and the Pentagon, and that they increasingly had no way to compel him to comply with their policy directives. And one of the cases that I dug into to illustrate this was an incident in the fall of 2022 when Ukrainian forces were advancing on Russian-held territory. And Starlink was dropping and the Ukrainians were signaling, well, we're in peril because of this. So US officials were calling Elon Musk to plead with him, please restore contact. Now, in the latest incident, we have Zelensky in Ukraine saying people are dying as a result of us losing connectivity. And Musk saying, well, it's not me. It's the administration. And the administration, for some days equivocating and now saying very narrowly, well, it wasn't the president. The truth is, we don't know who flipped the switch in this case. But this goes to the larger theme that this is a moment where so often the infrastructure is controlled by private interests with as much by way of life or death stakes as turning off communication capacities in a theater of war.

How would you assess the current relationship between Elon Musk and President Trump? They were close and seemed to have a falling out.

They were close and seemed to have a falling out. But in recent days, we have seen Musk get appointed to yet another government role, co-leading an initiative called Project Meridian, assessing the future of warfare. By the way, at a time when his companies have immense business with the US government. So there are real questions being raised about the conflicts of interest here, to put it mildly.

We, of course, mentioned Elon Musk's record campaign contributions.

Yes.

How do you see his spending in politics?

Well, he said that he was done after the last cycle with spending big to support Republican politics. But as you noted, that has not happened. The biggest of his recent checks, $158 million to the Senate Leadership Fund, is one of the largest political gifts ever made by a person in this country. And this is part of a wider trend line. We are living through a moment in American history when wealth imbalances are immense and deepening, and an oligarchy, and particularly a tech oligarchy, is increasingly entwined with politics, the infrastructure the government runs on, is now being provided by many of the same men that are bankrolling disproportionately one side of the aisle. And Elon Musk is a particularly acute example of that.

But I mean, we have to point out there are certainly big-name contributors, and I'll cite just George Soros, who are contributing millions to Democrats, aren't there?

Of course. But Elon Musk embodies a very particular and rising strain of politics in Silicon Valley. that is empowering their companies to operate with less and less regulation. Absolutely, money in politics more broadly is a bipartisan issue, but this is a specific rising tide that we're seeing right now.

Are there ways that Elon Musk influences our everyday lives that— of which we might not be aware?

I think one thing to highlight is the information economy that we all live in. This past April, I reported on a rival of Musk's, Sam Altman, in The New Yorker. And it's striking to look at how differently information related to my reporting that was tough on Musk flowed through the internet versus information that was tough on a rival of his. In the case of my reporting on Musk, a key post on X about it that I made got something like 8 million views. The OpenAI Sam Altman by comparison, the few posts I had made about that on his platform, it wound up getting something like 40 million views. You know, when I reported on Musk, he called me against the people and a puppet of the establishment. And then, you know, when I was reporting on someone he didn't like, he was posting that content nonstop and amplifying it in not always transparent ways. So we just all need to be aware that we are living in information systems that are frequently being manipulated to suit the whims and business objectives of very powerful individuals that don't have a lot of accountability around them.

Ronan Farrow, reporter for The New Yorker, one of the producers of the new documentary Musk. Thank you so much for being with us.

Thank you.

Tight Senate races in Texas, Iowa, and Kansas are getting a lot of attention during this year's midterm elections. Minnesota also has a close race, though you may not have heard as much about it.

Peter Cox from Minnesota Public Radio joins us. Peter, thanks for being with us.

Good morning, Scott.

Please tell us who's running and why this race has maybe been a little overlooked nationally.

So Peggy Flanagan, a progressive Democrat who's been lieutenant governor in Minnesota for the last 8 years, is up against Republican Michele Tafoya, who spent years as a sideline reporter for Monday Night Football and Sunday Night Football, and they're battling for a seat that's been held by Democrats since 2009. Recent polls have shown the 2 neck and neck, though Flanagan had a 4% edge in the most recent one. But normally, such a tight margin would mean political parties would be pouring money into this race, but that's not what's happening here. This election, Republicans are facing challenges in what would be reliably red states, so they've been putting their money into shoring up those races instead. And that seems to be a big reason why Minnesota's race has been much quieter, even though it's one of several that could determine which party controls the U.S. Senate.

President Trump indicated this week he might make a trip to Minnesota. How big a factor has President Trump been in this race?

Yeah, like many of these midterm races we're seeing nationwide, President Trump is a major factor. Tafolla, who has never held public office before, said when she announced her candidacy, she'd be honored to have his endorsement. But in recent months, she's tried to distance herself from Trump. And that became tougher this week when Trump was speaking at a campaign rally in Ohio, and he railed against members of Minnesota's Somali community, who he said were looting Minnesota welfare programs. He then implored people to get out and vote for Tafoya. During a debate yesterday, Tafoya was asked whether she'd campaign with Trump if he comes to Minnesota, and she didn't answer the question. Peggy Flanagan has consistently said Tafoya would be a lapdog for Trump and was quick to point out how Tafoya only recently has tried to distance herself from the president in this campaign.

Minnesotans are smarter than this new version of Michelle Tafoya who has shown up in the final weeks of this campaign. Give me a break.

Governor Tim Walz's administration has gotten a lot of heat over the fraud that you mentioned. Has this extended to Lieutenant Governor Flanagan, who, after all, is her second in command?

Yes. About 70 people have been convicted of bilking millions of dollars from state programs in the last few years. And questions have been raised about why the Walz administration didn't respond more quickly. During the debate, Tafoya was quick to point the finger at Flanagan.

This historic fraud happened under her watch, and suddenly she's looking out for Medicaid and SNAP?

Sell it to someone else, Peggy. Now, Flanagan says the issue was not under her purview as lieutenant governor.

The Trump administration cited this fraud as one reason for the increased immigration crackdowns in Minnesota last winter. Is that enforcement surge playing a role in this race?

Well, the months-long surge has been eclipsed recently by other issues like the economy and cost of living, but it's definitely still resonating. And Flanagan has commended the large-scale protests against ICE in Minnesota and has called for the agency to be dismantled. Now, Tafoya has criticized the rollout of the enforcement surge and called the fatal shootings of Americans Renée Goode and Alex Preddy by immigration agents devastating, but she also criticized the protests and said local leaders encouraged them.

Peter, any signs this race might get a last-minute influx of outside spending, as we've seen elsewhere?

Well, the president talking about this race this week, saying he might visit, could put it more front and center for some, but we haven't seen any big changes in political spending here in the last few days. About 2 weeks ago, U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune came to stump for Tafoya at a farm in southern Minnesota, and when he was asked whether the political action committee he helps run, the Senate Leadership Fund, would give Tafoya a funding boost, He was noncommittal. And we still haven't seen much national money flowing in to support either candidate. We're a little more than 2 weeks out from the election, so the runway for that kind of investment in this race is getting pretty short.

Peter Cox of Minnesota Public Radio, thanks so much for being with us.

You're welcome.

And that's Up First for Saturday, October 17th, 2026. I'm Scott Simon.

And I'm Aisha Roscoe. Our producer is Elena Tworek. She has help from Chris Harlan Dunaway, Gabe O'Connor, and Dave Mistich.

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