[tomhow]

This is the way HN has always been moderated. Well, for at least 10 years. It's in the FAQ [1]

If a story has not had significant attention in the last year or so, a small number of reposts is ok. Otherwise we bury reposts as duplicates.

It's nothing to do with it being political. It's simply to do with being a duplicate of a story that has already been heavily discussed, just a week ago.

It's a well established convention that a topic is only eligible for further front page exposure when there is "significant new information" (SNI) [2].

There have been many instances of SNI with respect to DOGE this year, which is why there have been (I believe) more front-page stories about it on HN than anything else [3].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

[3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

[jerrygenser]

The krebs on security detail was published just yesterday. While it's the same event, krebs is an authoritative source which has more detail than the npr source.

[tptacek]

The threshold is Significant New Information ("SNI"), where "significant" implies that it's material enough to alter the dimensions of the story. I don't think many people were left uncertain by the NPR story.