Two federal judges on Wednesday appeared sympathetic to arguments from elite law firms asking for definitive relief from President Trump’s executive orders targeting them.

Lawyers for two firms, Perkins Coie and WilmerHale, have asked the courts to permanently block the Trump administration from carrying out the orders, arguing that the measures are so blatantly unconstitutional that no trial is necessary.

The orders, they stressed, pose a critical threat to their businesses and the legal profession writ large. The firms have clients and have employed lawyers Mr. Trump opposes politically.

The judges presiding over their cases, Beryl A. Howell and Richard J. Leon of the Federal District Court in Washington, said they would take some time to reach a final decision. But both appeared receptive to the firms’ position that Mr. Trump was retaliating against them for speech he does not like.

Mr. Trump singled out Perkins Coie and WilmerHale for punishment in March with individualized executive orders, owing largely to past legal work on behalf of clients opposing Mr. Trump and policies he had championed. Among other measures, the orders directed federal agencies not to contract with the firms or permit their staff into federal buildings, and to suspend security clearances held by their lawyers.

Both firms had been involved in investigations concerning Russian disinformation during the 2016 election, and the question of whether Russian influence had been designed to benefit Mr. Trump’s campaign. And both noted in court filings that the president himself had said repeatedly that he had singled them out specifically because of their previous clients.

The government has asked that the lawsuits be dismissed, arguing that the orders were all within the president’s authority and an expression of political speech.

During a hearing Wednesday morning, Judge Howell spent two hours challenging Richard Lawson, a Justice Department lawyer who represented the government in both cases, to speak to a panoply of issues with the orders.

She repeatedly cast doubt on Mr. Lawson’s insistence that the White House, after careful consideration, had moved in good faith to rein in a small handful of law firms it deemed reckless, demanding they do free public interest work in exchange for being allowed to continue operating as usual.

Judge Howell also asked Mr. Lawson to speak to an expert opinion filed in the case by J. William Leonard, a former Defense Department official who worked for decades overseeing security clearances, and who compared Mr. Trump’s orders with tactics Senator Joseph McCarthy employed during the Red Scare.

“The arbitrary directive of immediate suspension of security clearances not for any personal conduct by any clearance holder but rather simply for that individual’s association with a law firm is no different analytically than if a directive were issued to immediately suspend the security clearances of all Jews or Muslims, all members of the LGBTQ+ community, all women, or all registered Democrats or Republicans,” Mr. Leonard had written in his report.

The outcome of the two cases on Wednesday, along with several nearly identical ones involving other firms, hold profound implications for the legal community, particularly after the president’s executive orders and threats caused a deep rift among elite corporate firms.

Facing similar threats from the White House, some high-powered firms responded by bowing to pressure, offering hundreds of millions of dollars worth of pro bono work on issues Mr. Trump supports in an attempt to escape persecution. To avoid attracting the president’s ire, none of the 10 largest firms by revenue initially signed onto a legal brief expressing support for Perkins Coie after it became the first firm subject to an order.

While discussing the case of Paul, Weiss, one of the firms that cut a deal, Mr. Lawson told Judge Howell that it was well within the president’s authority to rescind security clearances when their holders had fallen out of favor.

“When it comes to the national security clearances, an essential factor is trust in the holder,” he said.

“And $40 million worth of free legal services is enough to have the president trust Paul, Weiss again,” Judge Howell shot back.

Even as the Justice Department has maintained in court that the president’s orders were sincere and apolitical, designed to protect U.S. interests, Mr. Trump has continued to weigh in online, lashing out at the firms and the judges hearing the cases.

“I could have a 100% perfect case and she would angrily rule against me,” he wrote on Truth Social less than two hours before Judge Howell presided over the Perkins Coie case. “It’s called Trump Derangement Syndrome, and she’s got a bad case of it. To put it nicely, Beryl Howell is an unmitigated train wreck.”

Perkins Coie and WilmerHale, as well as Jenner & Block and Susman Godfrey, two other firms that chose to fight Mr. Trump’s executive orders in court, have already been granted temporary injunctions stopping the orders from taking effect while litigation proceeds.

On Wednesday, lawyers for both Perkins Coie and WilmerHale firmly rejected the government’s position, breaking down the different sections of the orders, which, among other things, accused them of interfering in elections and employing diversity and equity practices in hiring that Mr. Trump has framed as racist and tried to stamp out across the country.

Both described the orders as carelessly put together and nakedly political, pointing to apparent contradictions.

A lawyer representing Perkins Coie, Dane Butswinkas, noted that the lawyers who had drawn Mr. Trump’s rage had left the firm years ago, and that the firm’s involvement with Hillary Clinton’s political campaign, which Mr. Trump’s order referred to, happened in 2016.

“The president had a whole four years after that, where it didn’t seem like it hindered national security — it took nine years for it to hinder national security,” he said.

With both judges appearing inclined to agree that Mr. Trump’s actions seemed designed to exact revenge, both firms urged them to definitively block the orders before they caused wider intimidation and submission among elite firms.

“They claim we’re hysterical — I plead guilty,” Mr. Butswinkas said. “But there’s an old saying: Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.”

Dear Tripped Up,

In March 2024, I was awaiting my $96 Frontier Airlines flight from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to Trenton, N.J., when gate agents announced they were seeking 20 volunteers to fly the next day instead, in order to lighten the aircraft’s load. The offer: an $800 credit for a future flight. (Or was it multiple future flights? This was the subject of debate among passengers.) I stepped forward, and was asked to write my email address on a piece of paper, which was passed around for the other volunteers to do the same. The gate agent was patient and polite, but didn’t provide me with any receipt. When I returned the next day for my makeup flight, he was there again, so I asked why I hadn’t received an email with the credit, as other passengers had. He didn’t know. Later, I reached out to Frontier, but the carrier made it very hard to reach a human by phone and sent me emails that didn’t really make sense. I did get a $384 payment — not a voucher — a few days after the flight, but since Frontier still owed me about $300 from a cancellation the year prior, I thought it was for that. Can you help? Linda, Princeton, N.J.

Dear Linda,

Let me get this straight: Frontier’s method for keeping track of volunteers due $800 vouchers was to have them scrawl their email addresses on one piece of paper?

That’s a rhetorical question, because you emailed me the photo you snapped of said sheet, which showed a list of 10 email addresses in a wide variety of handwriting. That’s where I started when I dug into your problem, writing to the other nine email addresses to ask if they had gotten their credits — in some cases for the multiple travelers in their party.

Eight wrote back to tell their stories. All (except you) had received vouchers, although three complained, unprompted, about the scribble-down-your-email-address system, and several grumbled that the vouchers turned out to be for one-time use. One, Dino of Fort Washington, Pa., managed to persuade Frontier to split his family’s four $800 vouchers into eight $400 vouchers.

With help from the documentation you sent, the responses from your fellow passengers and a helpful email back and forth with Jennifer de la Cruz, a Frontier spokeswoman, I have figured out what happened, and gotten you back as much as — or maybe more than — you deserve.

Asking passengers to jot down their email addresses, Ms. de la Cruz wrote, is “not standard procedure.” Instead, gate agents are instructed to find the customer’s reservation in the system, confirm the contact information is correct, and annotate it as voluntarily or involuntarily denied boarding.

The difference is important. Compensation for involuntary denied boarding — bumping — is governed by U.S. Transportation Department rules, whereas airlines can offer whatever they want to seek volunteers. Your name somehow found its way onto the involuntary list, which in this case meant you would receive four times the amount of your original $96 ticket, or $384. That explains the $384 that Frontier refunded your credit card two days after the original flight. (It had nothing to do with the 2023 cancellation.) Frontier has now sent you a $450 voucher to bring the amount to a little over the $800 you were promised.

Ms. de la Cruz also looked into money — $302 to be exact — you say you were owed from that 2023 cancellation. She said your local travel agent erred in what and how much you were due. It was not a refund, the spokeswoman said, but a voucher, and worth only $54 after fees were deducted. That voucher was issued in 2023 and expired three months later. (You claim never to have received it.)

As a courtesy, Ms. de la Cruz said Frontier would send you the $302, and you told me you received an email that promised $302, in the form of check. (For a company that charges you extra if you don’t check in via its app, Frontier sure uses a lot of paper!)

You and several other passengers, by the way, gave kudos to the gate agent. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt that he did not know the Frontier system — as it turns out he did not work directly for Frontier, but for Trego Dugan Aviation, a contractor. It’s a very common arrangement these days — even gate agents wearing airline-branded uniforms are often contractors. This agent was even kind enough to jot down his work email address so you could follow up. Alas, your message to him bounced back, not the first time in this story that a handwritten email address led someone astray.

So what’s the lesson for anyone thinking of giving up a seat for a voucher? Be wary of anything a gate agent promises you verbally, and always politely try to get a receipt or other written evidence. Ask to watch as the agent enters your information, and take a picture of the screen and the agent — with consent. Favor cash over vouchers, which are nearly always time-limited, and ask for a complimentary hotel room if your substitute flight isn’t until the next day.

Some positive news for potential Frontier volunteers: Ms. de la Cruz said (independently of this article) that Frontier has since changed its policies to make vouchers good for more than one flight. That’s a good thing, because as Megan of Doylestown, Pa., one of the volunteers on that handwritten list, wrote to me, “Spending $800 on a Frontier flight is not easy.”

I’ll say, at least if you’re just booking one seat. I played around with the Frontier booking page and — attention North Dakotans — you can, as of this writing, get a last-minute round-trip flight from Fargo to Cancún, Mexico, with extra legroom and checked baggage, for just under $750.

If you need advice about a best-laid travel plan that went awry, send an email to TrippedUp@nytimes.com.

Germany’s economy will not grow for the third year in a row, the government said on Thursday, scaling back a previous prediction as President Trump’s tariffs bite into Europe’s largest economy, leaving it stagnant.

In January, the German government had predicted 0.3 percent economic growth, but Mr. Trump’s tariffs of 25 percent on imported automobiles, steel and aluminum threaten to hit Germany’s export-oriented economy hard, as could the turbulence in the markets caused by the yo-yo nature of how the tariffs have been imposed.

“The German economy, which is already suffering from weak foreign demand and reduced competitiveness, is particularly affected by the U.S. trade policy,” Robert Habeck, Germany’s economy minister, told reporters in Berlin on Thursday.

Germany is the only member of the Group of 7 nations whose economy has failed to grow in the past two years.

A new German government will take power after the expected next chancellor, Friedrich Merz, is sworn in on May 6. He has promised to spur growth, aided by looser borrowing limits that will allow the government to spend hundreds of billions of euros on defense and infrastructure.

But many of the problems plaguing Germany are homegrown, and economists warn that unless the country tackles some of the underlying structural problems — including a burdensome bureaucracy, one of Europe’s highest corporate tax rates and soaring energy prices — even the extended borrowing will not bring relief.

“It is still unclear whether and which reforms the next federal government will implement,” Mr. Habeck said. “The structural problems must be tackled quickly and consistently. This will determine whether the German economy receives a boost to its competitiveness or whether all of the money goes up in smoke.”

Germany is also facing a demographic problem, leading to a shrinking work force and a drop in productivity. At the same time, the country is grappling with a surging anti-immigrant sentiment, which is making it difficult for companies to attract the skilled foreign workers they need to remain competitive.

Many companies have scaled back their growth outlook as they digest the 10 percent blanket tariff on goods exported to the United States and await the outcome of a 90-day pause on higher levies.

The trade war is expected to be a drag on the economy next year as well. The government now predicts growth of 1 percent for 2026.

“If the new German government does not take decisive and swift countermeasures, we could even face a significant third consecutive year of recession,” said Helena Melnikov, managing director of the German Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

“It is therefore all the more important that the future German government shifts into forward gear and finds solutions to the customs dispute with the U.S.A., especially at the E.U. level,” Ms. Melnikov said.

This week, the International Monetary Fund also predicted that Germany’s economy would not grow this year, cutting its forecast to 0 percent from 0.2 percent in January. It noted that stronger consumption driven by rising wages and the willingness of the next government in Berlin to take on more debt could have a positive effect on growth.

Growth across the wider eurozone, which includes Germany and 26 other E.U. members, was also scaled down to 0.8 percent from 1 percent, the I.M.F. said.

Consumers, worried about the economy, are pulling back on their spending, and that anxiety is translating into lower sales and profits for some of the country’s largest consumer-oriented companies.

On Thursday, PepsiCo cut its full-year guidance outlook, citing a reduction in consumer spending as well as the impact the company is feeling from increased global tariffs.

“Relative to where we were three months ago, we probably aren’t feeling as good about the consumer now,” Jamie Caulfield, the chief financial officer of PepsiCo, told Wall Street analysts and investors on an earnings call Thursday morning.

The company, which manufactures Pepsi and Gatorade drinks as well as popular snacks like Doritos and Cheetos, cut its profit forecast for the full year to flat from its earlier guidance that expected earnings growth to be in the mid-single digits. It reported a decline of 1.8 percent in revenue, to $17.9 billion, for the quarter that ended March 22, and a drop of 10 percent in net income, to $1.8 billion, from a year earlier.

PepsiCo’s stock fell more than 4 percent, to $136, by early afternoon.

Comments made on PepsiCo’s earnings call echoed what executives at other consumer companies have said in recent days about how apprehension in the global economy is key to less consumer spending. The pullback has started to weigh on some companies’ revenues and dampen their outlook for the coming months, especially as they try to calculate the costs they’ll incur from the Trump administration’s new or increased tariffs on imported goods.

At Chipotle, same-store sales fell for the first time since 2020 in the most recent quarter, the chain reported this week. Uncertainty about the path forward for the U.S. economy started to affect spending in February, the company said, shortly after President Trump’s inauguration — a trend that continued into April.

“It was all around this idea of saving money, economic uncertainty — they’re eating at home more frequently than they’re eating out,” Scott Boatwright, the burrito chain’s chief executive, said when asked about consumer behavior. The underlying trend, he added, is “really tied to the consumer sitting on the sideline.”

Chipotle also lowered its full-year guidance. Beyond sluggish consumer spending, the chain said it expected Mr. Trump’s tariffs imposed in April — a broad 10 percent duty on many imports and tariffs on aluminum — to raise the company’s food, beverage and packaging costs this year.

Another signal of distress among shoppers: Consumers are doing less laundry to scale back on detergent purchases, an executive from Procter & Gamble, which makes household staples like Tide detergent, told Yahoo Finance.

On Thursday, P.&G. cut its full-year outlook and said whiplash on tariff policy had factored into a “pause” in consumption as consumers also tried to make sense of stock market volatility and job market uncertainty, said Andre Schulten, the company’s chief financial officer.

Signs that economic concerns are starting to affect consumer spending are appearing in the airline industry, too. American Airlines pulled its full-year guidance on Thursday, mirroring a move last month from Delta Air Lines. Robert Isom, the chief executive of American Airlines, told CNBC on Thursday that domestic leisure travel “fell off considerably” starting in February.

The most recent survey from the Conference Board showed consumer confidence tumbling in March to its lowest level since January 2021. Americans are increasingly anxious about their jobs and finances, the business group reported.

Hoping to entice consumers who are tightening wallets, executives at PepsiCo said it was offering less expensive, under $2, individual bags of snacks along with smaller snack packs in stores.

PepsiCo said it had calculated into its lower profit estimates the higher costs associated with the tariffs. “We also factored in some of our mitigation plans, some we will be able to execute more quickly than others,” Mr. Caulfield said on the call on Thursday.

Analysts had been keeping a close eye on the impact that tariffs would have on the food and beverage industry, specifically a 25 percent tariff on imported aluminum.

And while Wall Street analysts have been watching for potential fallout of the Trump administration’s trade wars on sales of American brands in key international markets, specifically Europe and China, PepsiCo said its global markets performed well in the first quarter.

In the United States, the popularity of using Ozempic and other weight-loss drugs has curbed sales for snacks and shifted purchases to smaller portions, Ramon Laguarta, the chief executive of PepsiCo, told analysts.

PepsiCo is also navigating demands by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. This week, Mr. Kennedy declared that “sugar is poison” during a news conference and said he had “an understanding” with major food manufacturers to remove petroleum-based food colorings from their products by the end of 2026.

Mr. Laguarta said that PepsiCo had been an industry leader in reducing sodium and sugar in products and that more than 60 percent of its business was from products with no artificial colors. In the next few years, he added, the company will have “migrated all the portfolio into natural colors or at least provide the consumer with natural color options.”

Ziff Davis, the digital publisher behind tech sites like Mashable, PCMag and Lifehacker, sued OpenAI on Thursday, joining a wave of media companies accusing the artificial intelligence giant of stealing its content.

Ziff Davis is one of the largest publishers in the United States, with more than 45 sites globally that together attract an average of 292 million visitors per month, and is among the biggest media companies pressing a claim against OpenAI.

(The New York Times has sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, claiming copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems. The two companies have denied the suit’s claims.)

In a 62-page complaint filed in federal court in Delaware, where OpenAI is incorporated, Ziff Davis says the tech company has “intentionally and relentlessly reproduced exact copies and created derivatives of Ziff Davis works,” infringing on the publisher’s copyrights and diluting its trademarks. It claims that OpenAI used Ziff Davis content to train its artificial intelligence models and generate responses through its popular ChatGPT chatbot.

“OpenAI has taken each of these steps knowing that they violate Ziff Davis’s intellectual property rights and the law,” the complaint says.

The company is seeking at least hundreds of millions of dollars in its lawsuit, according to two people familiar with the matter.

A spokesman for OpenAI said in a statement that its models were “grounded in fair use,” referring to the legal standard for use of copyrighted material.

“ChatGPT helps enhance human creativity, advance scientific discovery and medical research, and enable hundreds of millions of people to improve their daily lives,” the statement said.

Many executives in the publishing industry, which was profoundly disrupted by the widespread adoption of technologies such as search and social media, have regarded the growing popularity of artificial intelligence with increasing unease. Powerful A.I. systems built by companies like OpenAI have been trained on copyrighted content, drawing an outcry from many media companies.

Those companies have generally responded in one of two ways: striking deals to license their content to companies like OpenAI for millions of dollars, as in the case with News Corp, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal, or filing lawsuits to seek damages and reaffirm their rights to intellectual property.

Many of those claims are still working their way through courts. This month, a U.S. judicial panel consolidated several claims against OpenAI, including the one brought by The Times.

Executives at Ziff Davis have been considering for months which path to take, one of the people said. The company decided to sue, in part, in the hope that other publishers would follow.