Good Wednesday morning. Here are some of the stories making news in Washington and politics today.

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• President Trump doubled down on one of the biggest gambles of his presidency with a televised appeal to pressure Congress into paying for his long-promised border wall. It was his first prime-time Oval Office address, a strategy that he himself privately disparaged as unlikely to work.

• The nine-minute speech made no new arguments but included multiple misleading assertions. The Times fact-checked the president’s remarks.

• The Times sent correspondents to the four states bordering Mexico and found few who shared the president’s sense of alarm. Many said there was indeed a humanitarian crisis unfolding — but they blamed the Trump administration for worsening it.