UNION COUNTY, Tenn. — In Union County, high school students are learning trade skills as they prepare to graduate and either enter the workforce or pursue higher education.
Governor Bill Lee visited Union County High School on Monday to see the students in action. While there, he learned about the school's career and technical education program. He spoke with students there about the skills they were learning.
"The best about today was talking to students here in Union County that are engaged in multiple pathways of success, CTE programs that are going to give them the opportunity to succeed in life beyond high school," he said. "When kids are given the opportunity to do something they like, they're much more likely to be successful."
He also took the chance to comment on homelessness in Tennessee, the death penalty and the draft Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade.
After a bill effectively criminalizing homelessness across the state passed the legislature, he allowed it to become law without his signature. However, he expressed trepidation about the law.
"There are times when I believe that we need to think twice about what we're doing here," he said. "Let something become law, but talk about how it is that we can improve it going forward."
He also said he believed issues related to homelessness can be solved by communities across the state.
"Government can partner with churches and nonprofits and community organizations," he said. "The people in a community can solve the challenges, challenges like homelessness. And I think we got to work together to do so."
He also talked about executions in the state, after the execution of Oscar F. Smith was abruptly halted hours before he was scheduled to die. Officials previously said it was called off because of an unspecified "oversight" in how the lethal injection was prepared.
Gov. Lee said that there was a problem with the protocol behind the death penalty.
"The death penalty in Tennessee is reserved for the most heinous of crimes and appropriately so," he said. "But it is important that we're able to carry out the death penalty exactly as it is prescribed. It's incredibly serious. It has to be done with serious compliance. We determined that that wasn't completely being done in compliance."
Gov. Lee also briefly discussed how the state approaches issues related to women's health and abortion treatments, after a draft opinion from the Supreme Court was shared. It would have effectively overruled Roe v. Wade, giving states the chance to ban abortion treatment access and jeopardizing other rights the Supreme Court previously discussed.
Tennessee has trigger laws in place that would immediately go into effect if the Supreme Court announces its official decision to overrule Roe v. Wade, effectively banning abortion treatments in the state.
"We have actually worked really hard to provide support for women, particularly in crisis around pregnancy," Gov. Lee said. "We've expanded the postpartum care for TennCare mothers to a year from just a couple of months. We also have created an initiative called Tennessee Fosters Hope to strengthen our foster care program and our adoption program in this state. [We also] strengthened women's health clinics that, in particular, are focused on crisis pregnancies."