SECRET SERVICE VACATES POST IN TRUMP TOWER

The Secret Service has vacated its command post inside Trump Tower in Manhattan after a dispute between the government and President Trump’s company over the terms of a lease for the space, sources said. The Secret Service had stationed its command post — which houses supervisors and backup agents on standby in case of an emergency — in a Trump Tower unit one floor below the president’s apartment.

But in early July, the post was relocated to a trailer on the sidewalk, more than 50 floors below.

The details of the dispute between the Trump Organization and the Secret Service were not clear Thursday. Sources said the sticking points included the price and other conditions of the lease.

2 tons of seized ivory destroyed.

Trinkets, statues and jewelry crafted from the tusks of at least 100 slaughtered elephants were fed Thursday into a rock crusher in Central Park to demonstrate the state’s commitment to smashing the illegal ivory trade. State environmental officials and Wildlife Conservation Society members, who partnered with Tiffany & Co. for the “Ivory Crush” of nearly 2 tons of ivory, said no price justifies slaughtering elephants for their tusks.

Congress recessing, leaving much undone, tensions with Trump.

WASHINGTON»

Lawmakers scattered for their summer recess Thursday, leaving behind a slim record of achievements. The president is angry about what the Republican-led Congress couldn’t do — repeal Obamacare — as well as one of the few things it did: approve a Russia sanctions bill he detests.

So Republican senators leave Washington with simmering tensions between them and the White House now out in public for all to see. They’ll face voters back home who have cause for frustration about an unproductive Congress.

W.Va. governor, a Democrat, switching to Republican Party.

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice announced Thursday he’s switching parties to join Republicans as President Donald Trump visited the increasingly conservative state. Justice told about 9,000 Trump supporters at a rally in Huntington that he will be changing his registration Friday.

Girlfriend whose texts urged suicide gets 15 months in jail.

MASS.» A woman who as a teenager encouraged her suicidal boyfriend to kill himself in dozens of text messages and told him to “get back in” a truck filled with toxic gas was sentenced Thursday to 15 months in jail for involuntary manslaughter. Michelle Carter was convicted in June by a judge who said her final instruction to Conrad Roy III caused his death. Carter was 17 when Roy, who was 18, was found dead of carbon monoxide poisoning in July 2014. — The Associated Press