Good friday morning. We are tracking a new Severe Weather outbreak. More tornadoes, more heavy rain and more to come. Good morning, everybody. Its may 3rd. This is today. Relentless. The thing is just sitting there. Yet another round of powerful storms slamming the south and midwest, a string of tornadoes commuter chaos. A nightmare for hundreds of thousands of drivers after a fuel truck crash sparked a massive inferno in connecticut. I can feel the heat from here. An overpass melting. Part of the road closed for days to come. Were there live. Cracking down. Youre under arrest well use force overnight, new confrontations between police and protesters. Thousands now arrested from coast to coast. Just ahead, the growing questions over the behavior of those demonstrators and the response from schools and Law Enforcement. Courtroom tensions. Lawyers for the man accused of killing four Idaho College students, blasting prosecutors, accusing them of withholding key information. While frustrated families hammer both sides for delays and beg the judge to set a trial date. All that, plus fantastic finish. Hart. He connects. Huge three the New York Knicks close out philly to end their throws series. Its off. And its over and the pacers wrap up their upset of milwaukee. Mcconnell, the spin. Unreal as basketball fans gear up for more playoff action and Caitlin Clarks first game in the wnba. Im just excited to play. As hoops excitement reaches a fever pitch, today, friday, may 3rd, 2024. From nbc news, this is today with Savannah Guthrie and hoda kotb. From studio 1a in rockefeller plaza. Hi, everybody. Good morning. Welcome to friday. We got there. Nice to have you along with us. Got sheinelle in for hoda this morning. Part of i95 still closed after a major accident. Incredibly no one was hurt, but traffic, as you can imagine, was a nightmare. And it is going to last through the weekend, if not longer. We will have details on the cleanup and when that stretch can reopen coming up. But we begin with that Severe Weather overnight. Here it is, the scene in east texas yesterday. Storms there spawning several damaging tornadoes. Heavy rain, too, and it has caused widespread flooding. As we said, there is more rough weather on the way. A new threat that could bring more tornadoes and hail. We have dylan with the full forecast in a moment. Shes at the Kentucky Derby this morning. But lets start with kathy park. Reporter good morning to you. Yeah. The creeks and rivers here are so swollen right now. The water is so overflowing and flooding these businesses and homes. A concern over the rising river. This morning, up to a Million People impacted by severe storms, dumping heavy rain and catastrophic flooding across texas. Residents were told to leave or be stuck for days. The intense storms bringing wind and torrential rain battering the area. Cars stranded on washedout roads. In livingston, Johnathan Brown yelling to his neighbors for help, desperate to get out. Brown says his friend and girlfriend and his 5yearold stepdaughter had to swim their way to safety with only the clothes on their back. It was very stressful. Were five weeks away from having a newborn. Were glad we made it out. Materialistic is always replaceable, but our life isnt. Mandatory evacuations near houston. Along with those heavy rains, reports of 10 tornadoes in texas, louisiana and florida. 8 in texas alone. Hardest hit pauly. Look at that, yeah. Wow. Reporter across the south, residents cleaning up and bracing for more. And back here in harris county, Officials Say the immediate focus right now is response. Once the immediate threat is over, then it will be recovery. Flash Flood Warning throughout the houston metro area is in effect until 7 00 tonight. Kathy park leading us off in houston. Thank you. For more on Severe Weather overnight and whats to come, lets get to dylans forecast. Shes in louisville, kentucky this morning. Good morning, guys. We do have to watch that same area for severe storms today. The biggest threat is for large hail. Perhaps 2 inches or more in diameter. Although, we do still have a 5 chance of seeing tornadoes develop in that he has yellow areas. Through houston, heavy rain approaching western louisiana. And this is an area that has been hard hit with rain, with several inches, nearly a foot of rain in some areas, livingston nearly 10 inches of rain. We could see through sunday an additional 4 to 5 inches of rain, especially just north of houston, so flooding could certainly be an issue. Then you get those storms occurring today across western and Central Texas and heavy rain is likely with those storms, too. Flooding is going to be something were watching as well, guys. Thank you. Move now to that commuter crisis. A stretch of i95 in connecticut is shut down and it should be closed until monday after a fiery multivehicle accident involving a tanker truck. Emilie ikeda is near the crash site this morning. Repairs are just getting underway today. Emily, good morning. Hi there, savannah. Good morning to you. Were already seeing the impact from that terrible crash. Schools across the area are closed today. A shutdown of this major artery. You can feel the heat from here. Reporter this morning the, the race is on to restore one of the nations most crucial interstates after fireballs and thick black smoke were sent into the sky. Be advised. It looked like its fully engulfed over an overpass. Reporter a tanker, Passenger Car and tractor trailer collided, forcing a shutdown in both directions on i95, the east coast main highway stretching from florida to maine. This section of the interstate, just north of new york city sees more than 160,000 vehicles a day. Now leading to snaking lines of traffic. Have you ever seen anything like this . Not really . Stop, start, stop, start, having to reroute. Reporter incredibly, they say, there were no serious injuries. They have overpasses engulfed. Reporter but the intensity from the fire caused irreparable damage to steel beams. The heat from the fuel compromised some of the bridge. So that bridge is going to have to come down. Reporter last summer, a similar gas teenfueled fire was so intense it actually caused a section of i95 near philadelphia to collapse. Connecticuts governor declaring a state of emergency as the repairs ramp up. My recommendation is if you cant stay home, take the train. Stay away from the cars. Reporter so after the bridge, which is less than 10 years old, is completely demolished, officials need to repave this section of i95. It is expected to open at the earliest on monday morning. Until then, officials are warning people to brace for horrendous traffic. Trips that take 10 minutes have taken some people an hour and a half. No up packets to air quality. And again, remarkably so, no major injuries. Dont sugar coat it, emily. Okay. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Meantime, dozens of College Campuses remain ongoing in ongoing protests and war clashes between police and those demonstrators. Were seeing dramatic up imagines of arrests at Columbia University and ucla. Liz kreutz is at ucla where things are much calmer than they were just 24 hours ago. Liz, good morning. Reporter good morning to you. Thats right. It is a much different scene here than it was yesterday morning. Just to show how volatile things are, moments ago, we have live pictures, nypd began moving in to nyu where you guys are to remove the encampment there. The university apparently requesting this response from nypd. And it just highlights the intensity right now on College Campuses as more crackdowns begin. Outside uclas landmark royce hall this morning, little remains. Police making 200 arrests thursday morning after moving in with overwhelming force. Demonstrators, many of them in hard hats and gas masks appearing to resist. I have never felt more proud of myself or any community. Reporter yesterday, a scary scene at Portland State university. Video showing a car driving toward a pro palestinian protest. The driver then appearing to spray pepper spray toward a crowd. Meanwhile, there have been 30 arrests of protesters at Portland State. Police clearing its graffitifilled library. The nypd and nyu were asked to help clear protesters this morning. And demonstrators gathering outside the home of Columbia Universitys president just days after the raid on the schools campus documented on newly release Police Body Cam footage. Flash bang over. Showing police breaking into the occupied hamilton hall, and going through the protesters setup including a board with the slogan, political power comes from the barrel of a gun. Student activists say the nypds response was excessive. These people were nothing but peaceful. The nypd chief of patrol defending the police writing, the actions of the protesters were an abject failure of how civilized people are expected to behave in society while continually acting like a perpetual victim, and officials said outside agitators were among the demonstrators. Of the 282 people arrested at columbia and the city college of new york, the nypd and Mayors Office say nearly half were not affiliated with those schools. By nbc news count, more than 120 arrests have been made nationwide. Now the big question is who right now should be paying for all of this. Both the Law Enforcement response and the cleanup, new yorks mayor adam is that he believes Columbia University along with other private institutions potentially should be paying for at least some of this. Here at ucla, a public university, there are estimates that the cost of the Law Enforcement presence alone just over the past two days could potentially be in the multimillions. Sheinelle . Thank you. President biden is weighing in on the ongoing campus chaos and urging demonstrators to follow the law. Peter alexander joins us with that part of the story. Savannah, good morning. These are the first substantive comments from President Biden since these confrontations on campus exploded. The president defending students right to protest but condemning the violence, trying to draw a clear line between dissent and disorder. With the chaos on campus dominating the political debate, President Biden is now trying to diffuse the ongoing violence. Destroying property is not a peaceful protest. It is a matter of whats right. There is the right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos. Reporter the president responding to growing political pressure, walking a fine line between the right to free speech and his desire for law and order. People have the right to get an education, the right to get a degree, the right to walk across the campus safely without the fear of being attacked. Reporter later saying he will not call in the National Guard and rejecting changes to his middle east policy. Has the protest forced you to reconsider any of the policies with regard to the region . No. Reporter among democrats concerns, fears of support from Younger Voters that would be key to the president this fall. The collegiate branch of the dny warning their votes are not to be taken for granted by the democratic party, adding we reserve the right to criticize our party when it fails to listen to us. A day after praising the nypd for its crackdown at Columbia University, former President Trump accused President Biden of being absent on the issue. Other republicans also attacked the president for not responding sooner. What we really need, though, is moral clarity and leadership on campus and now the white house. We have laws on the books that just need to be enforced. Reporter in denouncing the violence, President Biden says antisemitism has no place in america and is set to deliver a speech on that topic during a Holocaust Memorial ceremony next week. Multiple people tell nbc news that after days after silence, President Bidens choice to speak really is an acknowledgment that it was simply unavoidable to stay quiet for much longer. The bottom line here, ending the war in gaza is the best solution, aggressively pushing for a ceasefire that includes release of the hostages including americans. Of course, it is unclear how soon that will happen. Peter alexander at the white house for us. Thank you. Nbc news will have the latest on the protests throughout the weekend and sunday morning on meet the press. Much more to get to this morning. President trumps hush money trial, week three wraps up today. The jury heard from Keith Davidson, the lawyer who negotiated payoffs for two women that claim they had affairs with trump. The defense is trying to paint him as a serial extortionist on crossexamination. The prosecution also played a secret recording of trump made by his then Attorney Michael Cohen as he was briefed on a plan for one of those payments. In the meantime, the judge is also being urged to hold the former president in contempt again for more violations of his gag order in the case. So much to unpack with danny cevallos. So Keith Davidson was the intermediary, this lawyer that negotiated the hush money deals with Michael Cohen. What did the prosecution get out of this witness . This is an area of Legal Practice they didnt tell us about in law school. But apparently there is an industry where you negotiate hush money payments. Thats what Keith Davidson did. He gave us a look into the seedy underbelly of this kind of practice of law, this kind of contract negotiation. But dont be distracted by all of the celebrity gossip. This was really about the prosecution establishing that Michael Cohen made a payoff to Stormy Daniels and the nature of that transaction because thats just one of the elements that the prosecution has to prove. Theyre trying to prove this was all done, this Business Record falsification, which is the actual charge in the case was done to influence the election. Thats where they get Keith Davidson in. But then he comes up for crossexamination. Did the defense score any points there . They scored some. They scored some in the sense they pointed out this is a very shady practice. But that doesnt do much to undermine the fact that davidson paid off Stormy Daniels. Thats what the prosecution will say in their closing. Did they connect trump to it, though . No one witness can give you anything you need. Davidson is just one piece. He establishes the transaction. He cannot establish that Donald Trumps hands were all over it. The people know this. The prosecution know this. They know they need other witnesses to shore this up. Other witnesses and other documents. So we can assume those are on the way, whether it is Michael Cohen, hope hicks, or somebody else. Danny cevallos, thank you very much. Lets talk about the nba playoffs. It went down to the wire in a thrilling series between the knicks and 76ers with just 6 seconds left, philly down three. Throwing it up. Its off. Clark rebounds and its over with that miss, the sixers are out. New york wins 115118 moving on to the eastern conference semifinals where they will meet the pacers. Indiana finishing their series with the bucks. Its the pacers first time making it to the playoffs in ten years. Okay. A moment of silence for the sixers. We hear you. Were not saying a thing, yeah. Lets get back to the weather. Thats a safe topic. Lauren is in louisville this morning. Churchill downs specifically for tomorrows Kentucky Derby. Reporter good morning, guys. It has been raining all morning long. Today scattered storms tomorrow, too. Flooding will be an issue down around eastern texas. Severe storms around western texas. The 80s are gone. Were looking at highs in the 50s and 60s. Out west, we have a Pacific Northwest storm that will bring some rain. Temperatures should be in the upper 60s. Thats a look across the country. Country. Well get to your local forecast in the next 30 seconds. Secondings. Hear the news . It was judy, wasnt it . She told you actually his name was howard from chicago get the fastest delivery to your door, and more, with target circle 360. And that is your latest forecast. Back to you guys in new york. All right. Thank you, dylan. Coming up, new drama in the idaho killers case. The accused killers legal team battling over evidence while the victims families fight for justice and a trial date. Well have the latest. Get ready for a new round of Caitlin Clark fever. The basketball star now just hours away from her wnba debut with the fever. Well take you live to texas where tensions are running high for tonights already soldout game. But, first, this is today on nbc. Dupixent helps you du more with less asthma. And can help you breathe better in as little as two weeks. Dupixent is an addon treatment for specific types of moderatetosevere asthma thats not for sudden breathing problems. Dupixent can cause allergic reactions that can be severe. Get help right away if you have rash, chest pai