Looping a query in custom widget not working

I’m trying to loop through a query in a widget but I’m getting no results..

I’m querying the posts table for testing purposes.

global $wpdb;

		  $widget_query = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT * FROM $wpdb->posts
			  WHERE post_status = 'published'");
		  if ($widget_query) :
			  foreach ($widget_query as $post):
			  	echo $post->post_title;
		  ?>
			  <h2><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>
		  <?php
			  endforeach;
		  else :
		  ?>
    		  <h2> Not Found</h2>
		  <?php endif;

The widget displays fine on the website but I get “Not Found”. How can I make this loop work?