There's an ironic prize on offer if Crystal Palace can beat Rayo Vallecano in the Conference League final on Wednesday: A spot in the competition Palace originally should have been playing in anyway.
A season which began with Palace in court appealing in vain against demotion from the Europa League ends with a chance to win its first-ever European trophy in the competition it didn't want to play in. The winner gets a Europa League place for 2026-27.
It's the last game at Palace for Oliver Glasner, the club's most successful coach, before he leaves at the end of the season.
If Palace wins, “then they play European football in the Europa League next year, and then they get next year what we should have got this year,” Glasner said Tuesday.
“I would like to watch on TV that they start the Europa League with the desire and the confidence that they can win the Europa League as well. This would make me really happy.”
Spain's Rayo fought its way to the final despite having a season marred by a fan boycott and a simmering feud between the supporters and the club president.
Palace and Rayo are usually in the shadow of more successful neighbors. On Wednesday, they get the European spotlight to themselves. Leipzig’s Red Bull Arena is an unlikely corporate setting for two vibrant fan bases.
Far from the glamor of Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid, Rayo is the Spanish capital's third team, backed by passionate fans from a working-class neighborhood.
Pirate imagery and left-wing politics make Rayo stand out, while fans even boycotted a game — which turned out to be a stunning 3-0 upset of Atletico — in protest at the club president, while the team briefly moved out of its stadium because the field was unfit for play.
The FA Cup win last season which qualified Palace for European competition was the first-ever major trophy for the south London team. After hosting Arsenal's Premier League title party Saturday, now's the chance for a party of their own.
Under Glasner, Palace has made a habit of outperforming bigger London rivals with a fraction of the budget, even if it often means saying goodbye to key players when better offers come along.
The dispute over ownership — which put Palace in the Conference League in the first place — has brought the club fines all season long as fans continued to insult governing body UEFA.
Palace had a boost Tuesday with midfielder Adam Wharton and U.S. defender Chris Richards both back in training ahead of the final, but Glasner didn't guarantee whether they could start. Torn ankle ligaments could leave Richards weighing up how to much to risk his fitness ahead of the World Cup.
“The positive thing is that they could make the training without big issues,” Glasner said. “Of course they still have pain but I think many players are feeling some pain after such a long season. Everybody wants to participate, but the final decision will be taken tomorrow.”
Rayo attacking midfielder Isi Palazón could be fresh for the final because he hasn't played since the semifinal win over Strasbourg due to a suspension in the Spanish league for confronting a referee. He scored two vital goals in the 4-3 aggregate win over Greece's AEK Athens in the quarterfinals.
AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
Crystal Palace manager Oliver Glasner attends a press conference in Leipzig, Germany, Tuesday May 26, 2026, a day ahead of the Conference League final between Crystal Palace and Rayo Vallecano on Wednesday. (Ronald Wittek/Pool Photo via AP)
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — President Donald Trump’s push to reshape congressional districts ahead of the November elections suffered a double setback Tuesday, as South Carolina senators declined to do so and a federal court blocked a Republican-backed map in Alabama.
As early in-person voting began Tuesday in South Carolina’s primaries, the state Senate rejected a Republican plan to cancel those congressional votes and instead schedule a new primary under revised districts designed to help the GOP oust a longtime Democrat.
Some senators said it was simply too late to make a change.
“South Carolina citizens are going to the polls today. And neither my conscience or common sense is going to let me stop an election that is already underway,” Republican state Sen. Richard Cash said.
The political drama in South Carolina is part of a Republican strategy — propelled by Trump — to redraw voting districts to the GOP’s advantage in an attempt to hold on to a slim House majority in the midterm elections. Republicans have been moving quickly to try to leverage a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that weakened minority protections under the federal Voting Rights Act.
In Alabama, a three-judge federal panel issued a preliminary injunction blocking the state from using a Republican-drawn congressional map that could help the GOP win an additional seat. The court said the plan “intentionally discriminated based on race” by including only one Black-majority district, and it ordered the continued use of a court-imposed map that includes two districts with a significant proportion of Black residents.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, a Republican, vowed a quick appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court and predicted an eventual victory.
Republicans remain ahead in a national mid-decade redistricting battle. But Democrats, who have suffered their own share of setbacks, praised the turn of events in Alabama.
The “fight for justice is far from over in states across the country where politicians are enacting gerrymanders on top of gerrymanders to erase equal representation for communities of color,” said Marina Jenkins, executive director of the National Redistricting Foundation, a nonprofit affiliate of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee.
Voting districts typically are redrawn after a census at the start of a decade. But Trump has urged Republican-led states to redistrict ahead of the November elections to try to rebuff political headwinds, which typically result in lost congressional seats for the president’s party in midterms.
Since Trump first urged Texas to redraw its voting districts last summer, Republicans also have enacted new House districts in Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Florida and Tennessee. Republicans think they could gain as many as 14 seats from those efforts, and perhaps 15 if they eventually win the ability to use a different map in Alabama.
Meanwhile, Democrats think they could win five additional seats from new voter-approved districts in California, plus one more from a new court-imposed map in Utah. Democrats suffered a setback earlier this month in Virginia, where the state Supreme Court invalidated a voter-approved redistricting plan that could have helped Democrats win additional seats.
Redistricting discussions are ongoing in Louisiana following an April high court ruling that struck down a majority-Black congressional district as an illegal partisan gerrymander. The Louisiana House could vote later this week on a new map that could eliminate a seat held by Democratic U.S. Rep. Cleo Fields and improve Republicans' chances of winning six out of the state's seven seats.
The Congressional Black Caucus on Tuesday called on major corporations across the U.S., including those that previously expressed support for voting rights and racial justice, to oppose redistricting efforts by Republican-led states that seek to eliminate majority-Black U.S. House districts. That comes after the caucus last week called for Black athletes to boycott public universities in states that are gerrymandering congressional maps to eliminate districts held by Black lawmakers.
More than 32,000 votes had been cast in South Carolina by 1 p.m. Tuesday on the first day of early voting for the June 9 primary after Democrats called for people against a proposed new map to turn out in force. In 2022, about 125,000 early votes were cast in the entire two weeks.
Among the first to cast an early ballot in the small city of Orangeburg was U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, the Democrat whose district Republicans were trying to reshape in their quest for a clean sweep of South Carolina’s seven congressional seats. A defiant Clyburn insisted he would run for reelection, regardless of what the district looks like.
“I’m OK if it’s Trump plus 20,” Clyburn said while describing the potential Republican advantage in a reshaped district. “I would be running where I live.”
The Republican-led House already had passed a plan that would reconfigure Clyburn's district, void the results of current congressional primaries and instead hold new U.S. House primaries in August.
Trump had lobbied for the plan, making at least two phone calls to Republican state Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey and also phoning in to a private meeting of Republican senators earlier this month. He also had maintained the pressure on social media.
But debate stalled in the Senate, where Democrats were staunchly opposed and some GOP lawmakers had concerns that an aggressive redistricting could backfire by making some Republican-held seats susceptible to losses because of the addition of Democratic voters.
Clyburn noted that when state lawmakers last redrew congressional districts, after the 2020 census, they spent months holding meetings across the state to gather public suggestions. Although that map resulted in a 6-1 seat advantage for Republicans over Democrats, the process was orderly and fair, he said.
“When the map was challenged, the U.S. Supreme Court said, yes, this is constitutional,” Clyburn said. But now, “this White House says, to hell with the process, to hell with the Constitution, just do what we want done.”
Chandler reported from Montgomery, Alabama, and Lieb from Jefferson City, Missouri.
Republican South Carolina Sen. Carlisle Kennedy, left, Democratic Sen. Ronnie Sabb, middle, and Republican Sen. Jeff Zell, right, watch a video during a session on redistricting on Tuesday, May 26, 2026, in Columbia, S.C. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Collins)
Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., center, joined by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., left, stands with members of the Congressional Black Caucus during an event outside the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, May 19, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
