a major winter nor'easter is bearing down this very moment with 70 miles per hour wind gusts and dangerous coastal flooding expected. a live report straight ahead. a late night meeting between president trump and the leaders of the nra as more companies take action in the fight over firearms. white house in turmoil. nbc news has learned that national security adviser h.r. mcmaster may be preparing an exit. this on the heels of hope hicks' resignation and new focus on jared kushner. all that and startling new revelations on how to best protect all of your super secret pass words. "early today" starts right now. >> good friday morning to you. i'm frances rivera. >> and i'm phillip mena. extreme wintry weather is threatening tens of millions of americans on both coasts.

the west is bracing for the strongest storm of the year. in lake tahoe a rare blizzard warning which could see up to five feet of snow by the weekend. and in the east, residents are gearing up for an intensifying nor'easter that could pound the region with ferocious winds, severe flooding and heavy snow and rain. authorities warning residents to evacuate as the storm could be the worst to hit since last january's bomb cyclone. dan scheinman has the latest. >> reporter: along the eastern seaboard, authorities and residents are bracing for a nor'easter. >> it's going to be pounding with the winds. >> reporter: in massachusetts, authorities in some coastal areas are urging residents to evacuate. >> evacuate and go to friends, family, somewhere away from the danger of the tides. >> reporter: in boston, workers were busy filling sandbags and deploying them in flood-prone areas. in milford, connecticut, storm drains were cleared out. officials there are concerned it

could be a repeat of october's flooding. along the jersey shore it was time to board up and tighten up. >> it sounds like it's packing a punch and i'm very concerned about this. >> reporter: the midatlantic is preparing for a potentially historic windstorm. gusts could be up to 60 miles per hour. potomac electric power company says it has extra crews at the ready to deal with power outages. and authorities say anyone in the storm's path needs to be ready if the lights go out. dan scheinman, nbc news. >> nbc meteorologist bill karins is tracking it. where is it at now? >> it's getting stronger by the second off the coast of the new jersey shore. we've already had 8 to 10 inches of snow in western new york. so the full-fledged snowstorm for them. heavy rain in southern new england. but the winds are just now starting to respond and pick up. we have wind advisories and wind warns that cover 80 million people. gusts could be 75 to 80 on cape cod and 40 to 60. so you can imagine the travel nightmare at the airports with cancellations and delays during the day today. here is how it plays out.

7:00 a.m. this morning. winds 56 to 60 miles per hour from virginia beach to norfolk right through fredericksburg to washington, d.c. even as far south as raleigh in the 40-mile-per-hour range. the winds in new england are the strongest as we go throughout this afternoon. 55 in new york city at 6:00 p.m. 6 to 70 up in southern new england 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. this evening. by saturday morning it all quiets down. but the most damage is the coastal flooding. high tides tonight and also high tides saturday morning. >> a rough 24 hours ahead. all right, bill, thank you. more retailers are taking a stance when it comes to guns. west coast chain fred meyer will no longer sell firearms or ammunition to anyone under 21. its parent company kroger said it believes the change is a common sense step that it can take is in line with its values. an outdoor retailer rei is taking a stronger stance, holding all future orders from vista outdoors until the company outlines a plan of action on guns. vista owns some of rei's longtime partners like camel

back as well as rifle manufacturer savage arms. rei says it believes it's up to companies who make and sell firearms to work towards a common sense solution. this is days after delta said it would eliminate its discount for nra members. lawmakers have hit back, killing a proposal that would give major airlines a tax break on fuel. governor nathan called the controversy an unbecoming squabble but said he will sign whatever bill is passed. this as nra top leaders met with president trump at the white house last night with director kris cox suggesting the president may be swayed against gun control. cox tweeted potus and vpotus dent want gun control. cnn reports counterintelligence officials have been looking into a business deal involving a vancouver hotel and spa and the first daughter. the reporting has not been confirmed by nbc news. it adds to a growing list of

headlines plaguing the white house there are questions swirling about the president's son-in-law and his security clearance there is also growing speculation that john kelly may also be on thin ice there is a very public feud between trump and his own aj jeff sessions heats up. white house press secretary sarah sanders declining to say if president trump wants sessions gone. but it's another west wing departure that is making headlines one day after hope hicks announced she was stepping away. national security adviser h.r. mcmaster next? kristen welker has the details. >> reporter: with the white house already in turmoil, five people familiar with the discussion tell nbc news national security adviser h.r. mcmaster may be on his way out as early as this month. those sources say the ouster is being orchestrated by chief of staff john kelly and defense secretary james mattis. white house spokesman michael anton dismissing the story, writing i was just with president trump and h.r. mcmaster in the oval office.

president trump said the nbc news story is fake news and told mcmaster that he is doing a great job. >> he is a man of tremendous talent. >> reporter: mcmaster an active duty three-star general was brought into the administration from the pentagon a year ago to replace michael flynn who has since pleaded guilty in the russia investigation to lying to the fbi. it all comes as the president's inner circle is getting increasingly smaller. one of his closest advisers, hope hicks announced her resignation and new focus on jared kushner. his top secret security clearance revoked last week. now reporting that he received lone after business meetings at the white house. >> jared is still a valued member of the administration and he is going to focus on the work that he has been doing. and we're going to continue pushing forward on that front as well. >> reporter: chief of staff john kelly poked fun of his own rocky tenure during a homeland security event. >> i miss every one of you every day. [ laughter ]

>> the last thing i wanted to do was walk away from one of the great honors of my life, being the secretary of homeland security. but i did something wrong and god punished me, i guess. >> reporter: partially driving the chaos, the russia probe. and nbc news has learned that according to several current and former u.s. officials, robert mueller is preparing more charges against russian nationals for meddling in the u.s. elections. frances? >> all right, kristen, thanks. now a surprise move from the white house that could affect your wallet and your 401(k). stocks tumbling. the dow dropping more than 400 points after president trump's sudden announcement on tariffs and steel and aluminum sparked fears of a trade war. the president sent heads spinning on capitol hill with leading republican officials like the secretaries of state and defense, the national security adviser, the director of the economic council, speaker paul ryan and more all coming out against the president's

move. for more on this, let's go to nbc's chris pollone in washington. hey, chris, good morning. >> reporter: good morning, phillip. the president has been railing against cheap foreign steel and aluminum since well before he was ever a candidate. yesterday he made some comments and announced new tariffs that frankly caught some of his staff offguard. >> we'll probably have everything completed by next week. we'll be imposing tariffs on steel imports and tariffs on aluminum imports. and you can see a lot of good things happen. it will be 25% for steel. it will be 10% for aluminum. it will be for a long period of time. >> reporter: and the president made the announcement, railing against what he calls unfair trade. but many market analysts fear this will have some unintended consequences. while it may make americans feel more competitive in price with some foreign steel, it could have unintended consequences,

including raising prices for things that people buy. and while the president has long railed against china, it turns out that china is not even in the top five of aluminum sellers here in the united states. live in washington, i'm chris pollone. let's go back to you now. >> thank you. let's turn back to bill karins with more of the massive nor'easter. >> we talked about the coastal flooding. we talked about problems with the winds. the snow is also an issue. now snow warnings have been issued for the capitol around albany where they had a borderline forecast. now they've increased up to 7 inches there is some significant snow that is going to be had. this is the additional snowfall forecast from now to the end of the storm. and central new york towards the berkshires, the poconos, someone could get 1 to 2 feet and flood threat from new york city to boston. an inch to 2 of

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compounds you! >> one of the scariest movies ever. i still can't watch. the terrifying scene from the movie "the exorcist." check out this headline. the vatican is train mortgage exorcists with reports of demonic possessions soaring. the demand for exorcisms in italy has tripled in recent years. one official says there are some 500,000 cases requiring exorcism annually. so the vatican is planning to train more priests during a week-long international course in april. somebody evil ventured over to twitter here. do you think the conversations we have on twitter are healthy? that's what the company is having for. in a series of tweets, jack dorsey expressed regret over not being able to aggress abuse of the platform fast enough. the company is now accepting

proposals for the project. twitter says it believes it will help it measure its impact on the world for years to come. >> ever since they added more characters, more and more people are spewing stuff out there. >> more hate. >> because of that very reason. president trump, speaking of twitter and tweets, see making headlines after he heaped international praise the several countries for how they handle drug dealers. says he admires them for imposing the death penalty on those pushing drugs. take a listen to it. >> the drug dealers, the drug pushers are -- they're really doing damage. they're really doing damage. some countries have a very, very tough penalty, the ultimate penalty. and by the way, they have much less of a drug problem than we do. i was there -- >> the president's comments came during a white house summit on opioids. legendary quarterback jim kelly is once again fighting cancer. he released a statement saying recent tests have shown that his oral cancer has returned.

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thank you. >> rapper jay-z has dethroned diddy as forbes' number one wealthiest hip-hop artist. up to 900 million, knocking diddy from the top spot for the first time since the list was created seven years ago. diddy is at number 2 with 825 million followed by dr. dray at $770 million. and drake and eminem tied for fourth place at 100 million. >> wow, the empires these guys have. now the startling move from equifax. the company admit that's an additional 2.4 million americans' personal information was compromised in last year's massive cyberattack, bringing the total to nearly 148 million. in the constant battle to keep our private information safe, nbc's tom costello explains how to best manage all of those passwords. >> reporter: we may think we've got good passwords, but it turns out the average person uses just 12 passwords to access 150

online accounts. and they're usually not very good. >> think more in items of pass phrases. think of sentences rather than words. >> reporter: but remembering so many long pass phrase series nearly impossible. the answer? password managers that store and encrypt all of our passwords. you probably already have a basic password manager built into your operating system or browser. but experts recommend downloading an upgrade. among the most popular, lastpass, 1password and dashlane. they often are free or just a few bucks a month and easy to use. the password manager remembers all of your pass words from shopping to banking to e-mail. it creates much stronger randomly generated pass words, and then encrypts them, stores them and auto bills a login for every site you visit. >> the only thing you have to remember is your master passw d password. >> it works on your computer and your mobile devices. and starts up as soon as you log

in. how do you protect your password manager? multi-step authentication. to keep cybercrooks at bay. tom costello, nbc news, boston. >> we could all use a little help with the passwords. >> it is hard to keep track. just ahead, ellen's surprise house warming gift for mandy moore. plus, everyone's favorite workplace trio may be reuniting. it was really easy. easy. that'd be nice. phone: for help with chairs, say "chair." phone: for help with bookcases, say "bookcase." bookcase. i thought this was the dresser? isn't that the bed? phone: i'm sorry, i didn't understand. phone: for help with chairs, say "chair." does this mean we're not going out? book-case. see how easy renters insurance can be at geico.com. olympic downhill skier...as an

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dangerous winds, snow and flooding from the jersey shore to the pennsylvania suburbs. our entire area will feel the impact as a major storm moves in. our first alert radar shows what's coming our way. we could be facing everything from downs power lines to near white out conditions. we have you covered with everything you need to know. good morning, i'm tracy davidson. >> and i'm vai sikehema. this morning we have issued a first alert for our area. we have team coverage tracking it all for you. matt delucia is live along the jersey shore, and we begin with first alert meteorologist brittany shipp with the latest.

>> you really need to slow down for your morning commute and especially for your evening commute. you can already see on the back end we're starting to see a little snowfall. it's still outside of our area. it's closer to harrisburg. but we could see a lot of this rain switching over to snow. it's going to be wet snow, but we're also going to see our wind speeds kicking up as well. we're talking about wind gusts closer to 50 miles per hour. the heaviest is right over philadelphia stretching up to parts of hatfield even into lehigh valley. our rainfall rates are closer to about 3/4ths per hour. stretching down towards chest, and as we go into the rest of today we'll continue to see the heavy rain coming down. it is affecting the entire area. this started early this morning.

it's going to stay in effect until saturday at 10:00 a.m. and wind gusts anywhere from 50 to 70 miles per hour, coastal flooding going to be a concern for us, heavy mountain snow, and one of our biggest things is white out conditions. again, this is going to affect both of your commutes today. for a closer look of what we're expecting, what we're seeing right now we're going to send it over to katie zachary. >> take a look at this video right here. slick conditions may be to blame for this tractor-trailer crash. the cab of the semi separated from the frame. it is still in our system potentially causing delays as you start off on the blue route. we want to look at the schuylkill expressway on