This thread is probably going to wind up being the containment thread for that subject because of it.
Given that this is an event of legitimate importance to some people here (albeit an off topic subject for HN) I would personally encourage people to leave this specific thread alone and hide it rather than flag it, since it's flown under the radar (and every other thread is bound to be flagged to oblivion.)
What's the rationale behind flagging stories like this? While it may be off-topic as tech news, in my eyes the HN community is quite cosmopolitan and threads like these usually end up being quite interesting and informative for me.
Being off-topic is reason enough. Purely political stories like this can overwhelm the site if not dealt with quickly. Hacker News just isn't the proper venue for mainstream news.
"Updated May 15, 2016 7:37 p.m. ET". What's weird is that we're discussing a two months-old article on current events. I suppose it's useful background knowledge...
Given that this is an event of legitimate importance to some people here (albeit an off topic subject for HN) I would personally encourage people to leave this specific thread alone and hide it rather than flag it, since it's flown under the radar (and every other thread is bound to be flagged to oblivion.)