Pillow magnate and election denier Mike Lindell won’t accept his loss in Minnesota’s gubernatorial primary, claiming there are anomalies in the voting numbers. Despite President Donald Trump’s endorsement, Lindell lost to Minnesota House Speaker Lisa DeMuth by about 11 percentage points and more than 45,000 votes. On Tuesday night, when a reporter asked him on his livestream LindellTV if he’d concede the race after the Associated Press called it for DeMuth, Lindell said, “Why would I listen to the AP?”“There’s 265,000 votes left to count. I’m down by 18,000 now,” Lindell ranted. “I’m not going to give up this race until the votes are counted. That’s nonsense.”Manic Mike Lindell is ranting and raving that he won’t concede. pic.twitter.com/A67RewLDa3— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) August 12, 2026 Lindell is a leading 2020 election conspiracist and consistently casts doubt on election results, so it’s expected that he would dispute his own loss. Trump tried to give him an eleventh hour boost on Tuesday, posting on Truth Social about how “Mike Lindell deserves a BIG WIN IN MINNESOTA today.“Nobody has worked harder, and given up so much, in fighting for free and fair Elections. Go out, NOW, and VOTE for Mike Lindell for Governor. He will not let you down. Thank you! President DJT,” Trump wrote. Democratic Representative Ted Lieu mocked Lindell and his election conspiracies on X after the news of his loss, posting, “Many people say Venezuela rigged the election against Mike Lindell because they don’t like his pillows. Never seen anything like it.”Now Minnesota is guaranteed to have its first ever female governor come January, as Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar handily won the Democratic gubernatorial primary. Meanwhile, Lindell will have to go back to his struggling pillow business, which he stepped away from to run for office. Read more about Lindell:President Trump has long cast Washington D.C. as a disgusting, violent hellhole of a city that wasn’t safe for living until he called in the National Guard last year. Now new reporting from the Washington Post calls that claim into question.The Post found what experts had long suspected—that the numbers Trump so often touted—an 88 to 92 percent decrease in crime and an 18 percent decrease in homicides—were due to a downward trend in crime that appeared long before the National Guard did. Not only that, but the study notes an increase in assaults with a dangerous weapon. “If you want to argue that there was an additional decline on top of that due to all these interventions, you could plausibly make that argument,” said crime data analyst Jeff Asher told the Post, noting that violent crime rates have been dropping virtually everywhere for the past three years. “But you can’t make the argument that the intervention caused that decline or even was a major factor in those trends turning over ... “This is what happens with crime data,” he continued. “It’s the ultimate ‘Failure is an orphan, success has many fathers’ issue.”This means that the National Guard have been loitering in the streets of D.C.—in metro stops, in beautiful public parks, by Trader Joes—without accomplishing anything.“Homicide was notably below expected during and after the surge, although we’re more cautious with that finding because the numbers are relatively small,” he said. “Robbery and broader community violence also moved lower, while assault with a dangerous weapon did not show the same clear citywide pattern.” Georgia State University criminal justice professor Thaddeus Johnson said. “One would be hard-pressed to say that it didn’t play a role ... but you would also be hard-pressed to say it was the only or primary reason why we’ve seen reductions.”The Trump administration has continued to insist that they should get all the credit. “D.C. is one of the safest cities in the country now. We’re the most amazing country on earth, the strongest nation on earth. you would think our capitol would be a symbol for the entire world, a beacon. And it wasn’t before President Trump,” White House Bordern Czar Tom Homan said Tuesday on Fox News, a year after Trump initiated the surge. “I lived here for 15 years, and I never walked the streets of Washington, D.C. without a sidearm. But now? I walk around the streets, it’s safe,” he continued. “Another promise made, promise kept. DC is much safer now. Memphis, much safer. All the cities where President Trump has deployed federal agents and the National Guard to help local authorities, it’s all good. My wish is places like Chicago will reach out ... rather than be a shooting gallery every weekend.” Tom Homan: "DC is much safer now. Memphis, much safer. All the cities where President Trump has deployed federal agents and the National Guard to help local authorities, it's all good. My wish is places like Chicago will reach out..." pic.twitter.com/QjTF9HyWI8— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) August 11, 2026 Local leadership doesn’t share Homan’s sentiment.“Today marks one year of the occupation of DC by federal forces, which has resulted in injury and trauma for DC residents, countless families separated by ICE, and the killing by federal law enforcement of Julian Bailey and Nolberto Meza, for which there has been no transparency or accountability,” D.C. Democratic mayoral nominee Janeese Lewis George wrote Tuesday. “As we continue the fight to win local autonomy and DC statehood, I will use every tool at my disposal as mayor to demand that these federal troops go home to serve their own communities and not be used for political theater and domestic military occupation.”Editor’s PickYou see how this looks, right? Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has reportedly gained as much as $2.9 million from his fossil fuel interests since being tapped to join the high court.Alito’s reported assets—excluding his home and other personal property—grew from $1.1 million in 2005 to between $3.4 million and $8.4 million in 2024, according to federal financial disclosures. During that period, his oil and gas holdings have made him between $390,000 and $2.9 million, according to an analysis by Court Accountability, The Guardian reported Tuesday.*And as the Supreme Court prepares to hear a fossil fuels-related case, that brings Alito’s ability to be impartial into question, Court Accountability co-founder Lisa Graves warned.“You might have real appreciation for how that industry has helped make it possible for you to perhaps buy a second home on the water, or live a [certain] lifestyle,” said Graves, who put together the analysis. Alito, who is the only Supreme Court justice with holdings in energy companies, has refused to step back from the upcoming petition brought by fossil fuel giants Suncor and ExxonMobil. He previously recused himself from a petition from the same companies in 2023,. The new case will determine whether municipal and state governments can seek damages for decades of Big Oil deception regarding the climate harms these companies knew their fossil fuel products would cause—a make or break decision for Alito’s second stream of income. Most of Alito’s financial gains came from property in Grady County, Oklahoma, in which his wife, Martha Ann, holds a mineral interest. Alito has reported the value of the plot between $100,000 and $250,000, but Graves noted that one of Alito’s family members had sold an adjacent plot for $800,000, suggesting that the jurist could be underreporting the land’s value.In 2022, Alito’s wife agreed to lease the plot of land to Citizen Energy, a private oil and gas company. No reporting or public documents indicate that a well has been drilled on this property, but a lease agreement shows that the owners would have received three-sixteenths of the profit from any extracted oil. “It raises concerns because you have a sitting justice who is hoping to get richer based on oil exploration of this land,” said Graves. Citizen Energy was later purchased by Validus Energy, in which Elliott Investment Management holds a major stake. Alito previously landed in hot water after he failed to disclose a free plane ride he took from Elliott Investment Management’s founder. The firm also owns more than 52 million shares of Suncor, which are worth more than $3.2 billion, according to Court Accountability. Alito has major investments in Vanguard High Dividend Yield ETF, a high dividend yield fund in which Exxon is the third-largest holding. In 2004, Alito inherited between $100,000 and $250,000 worth of stock in Exxon—which he has since sold. “My view is that you shouldn’t be able to sell a stock just so you can sit on a case, even though that company’s profits have benefited you,” said Graves.In May, a coalition of watchdog groups—including environmental, civil liberties, and good government organizations—sent a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee calling for an investigation into whether Alito’s refusal to recuse in this case violates federal law. The court is expected to hear oral arguments on October 5.* This article originally misstated the amount Alito has made from his oil and gas holdings.Read more about Alito:Lindsey Graham’s sister Darline doesn’t think she was handed her late brother’s Senate seat, even though she was literally appointed by South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster. On Tuesday, NewsNation’s Ryan Noble asked what Graham would say to people who think that.“I don’t see it that way, I’m not being handed this seat. I realize that I have to earn voters, so I’m working hard to do that. Like I said, I want to spend the next two weeks getting out to as many places as I can. You know, Lindsey was amazing, I will never fill his shoes. No one can ever fill his shoes, and I don’t just expect it to be handed to me,” Graham said. Darlene Graham: "I'm not being handed this seat" pic.twitter.com/17pYTeBOI9— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 11, 2026 The interview came on the same day that South Carolina is holding a special primary election to replace Lindsey Graham as the Republican candidate. His sister was expected to fill a caretaker role instead of running for a full term. Last month, MAGA personalities raged at her decision to run, calling her “idiotic” and one of the “worst congressional creatures.” President Donald Trump has decided to back Graham, but conservatives say she doesn’t have the credentials or a history of being involved in right-wing causes. Her only political donation on record happens to be to a South Carolina state senator that helped kill an abortion ban, and she neither voted in the 2024 presidential primary nor the 2016 general election. For once, Trump’s endorsement hasn’t led to the state’s Republicans coalescing behind Graham. None of the candidates in the special election are expected to get 50 percent of the vote, according to The Washington Post, making a runoff election likely. Turnout is also expected to be low, drawing only the most politically engaged voters, and that doesn’t bode well for Graham. Read more about Graham:President Trump thinks that supporters of New York City’s congestion pricing policy are “Radical Left Jihadists.” The president unloaded this cartoonishly bigoted insult in a Tuesday morning post criticizing NYC’s “Pied-a-Terre Tax”—a fee on second properties valued at $1 million or more. He called it a “dangerous political ‘experiment’” and falsely claimed that the policy would drive people out of the city “by the tens of thousands,” which has not occurred at all so far. Then he got to the congestion pricing. “It’s hard, as President of the United States of America, to sit back and watch it happen, especially to a place I once loved. Financial, and then Social, RUIN, is a 100% certainty - And then the Radical Left Jihadists charge Congestion Pricing on top of everything else,” Trump wrote. “This doesn’t work in America, and must be stopped, NOW!” He went on to proclaim that his administration would explore whether “the Federal Government has any legal right to avert this disaster, before it is too late, for the millions of people who cherish New York and want to see it thrive, as opposed to becoming a filthy, crime ridden, decrepit place of mockery and scorn.”Trump’s post came just a day after a Staten Island judge temporarily paused the tax law. The pause was blocked that same day.Editor’s Pick