Boston is getting a new Smithsonian-affiliated museum about… finance?

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Dreary conditions have returned to both the skies and the stock markets. But on the bright side, Boston University men’s hockey is headed to the national championship tomorrow night, the Red Sox game had a fun walk-off ending and it’s Friday.

Now to the news:

Dust off your best Patagonia vest: The Museum of American Finance is moving to Boston. The Smithsonian-affiliated institution announced yesterday it has signed a 10-year lease to relocate to the Seaport, where it will occupy a 5,400-square-foot waterfront space on the Commonwealth Pier. The move comes after the museum, which was located in New York City since its founding in 1988, was forced to close in 2018 due to flooding from a burst water main pipe and never reopened.

• What’s it about? The museum focuses on finance and the financial history of the U.S. — which, yes, sounds kind of like a snooze. But David Cowen, the museum’s CEO and president, says their mission — which includes preserving “ tens of thousands of artifacts which showcase what finance has done for this country” — is to make the topic “engaging” and less intimidating. In addition to exhibits, they plan to host classes and events on financial literacy. “This nation needs that desperately,” Cowen told WBUR’s Dan Guzman.
• Why Boston? Cowen says Boston is a good fit due to its “highly innovative” role in the nation’s economic history, as the home to North America’s first minted coins, the country’s first paper currency, its first lottery and its first mutual fund.
•  The museum collection also includes “hundreds” of Boston-centric artifacts, like a 1912 stock certificate for shares in the baseball team that became the Red Sox and a blank check signed by President John F. Kennedy that a Secret Service agent was carrying when JFK was assassinated in 1963. (Cowen says JFK was known to give agents blank checks so he could buy gifts for his wife and kids while traveling.) “When you’re president of the United States, do you know what account number you get?” Cowen said. “You get account number one.”
• What’s next: The museum aims to open on July 1, 2026, just in time for the country’s semiquincentennial celebrations. And despite the museum’s focus, you won’t need to bring any currency of your own; admission is free.

Read his lips: No new taxes will be in the Massachusetts House’s upcoming budget proposal, according to House Speaker Ron Mariano. The Democratic leader made that pledge to both Bay State residents and businesses yesterday at a Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce event, despite simmering budget concerns.

Meanwhile at the Moakley Courthouse: A federal judge in Boston says she will issue an order preventing the Trump administration from ending, at least for now, a program known as humanitarian parole, which has allowed hundreds of thousands of migrants to live in the U.S. temporarily. WBUR’s Jesús Marrero Suárez has more details on the case here.

• Why it matters: Without the ruling, roughly 532,000 immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela who’ve been living and working in the U.S. under the program since 2022 would face deportation by April 24 — less than two weeks from now.

FYI: The Supreme Court denied an appeal by Karen Read’s lawyers to delay her second murder trial. That means arguments in the trial could start as early as next week, since nearly all of the jurors have been chosen.

• What was the case for a delay? Read’s defense argued that retrying her amounted to double jeopardy. That’s because several members of last summer’s hung jury later said they unanimously agreed Read was not guilty of murder and leaving the scene, and were only deadlocked on the manslaughter charge against her. However, courts have repeatedly rejected that argument, saying the jury got clear instructions on how to reach a verdict. Read more about the coming retrial here.

P.S.— What exactly did a Boston city councilor plead guilty to? Take our Boston News Quiz and test your knowledge of the stories we covered this week.