Not routinely; occasionally, when an article clearly fits the site guidelines and the site mandate as described at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. That's not clear with this story. Indeed one can make a somewhat stronger argument that it doesn't: would they cover it on TV news? (yes) — is it evidence of a new phenomenon? (no, unfortunately) — is it likely to turn into a flamewar? (highly). We'd need stronger answers to those questions in order to turn off the flags.
What does seem clear is that most of the community doesn't consider this a good story for HN. If they did, the upvotes would have outweighed the flags, and the opposite was the case. I know a smaller set of users feels passionately the other way, but that's not enough for us to override community opinion. In fact, that would be a strategy for turning HN into a mostly-political site.
