With student loan debt soaring, interest rates on Stafford student loans will double next week. The Senate’s first order of business after Independence Day will be legislation to retroactively restore the lower rate. Sen. Bernie Sanders cosponsored the bill introduced on Thursday. To help students earn money for school and to give high school grads help starting careers, the Senate on Thursday approved a $1.5 billion jobs program for young people. The Sanders provision was included in a comprehensive immigration reform bill. Across Capitol Hill at the Supreme Court building, justices strengthened gay rights on Wednesday after handing down a ruling that weakened voting rights on Tuesday. And on Friday, Sanders was part of a group of senators demanding answers from the nation’s top intelligence official about secret domestic spying operations that scooped up millions of telephone and Internet records. 

Student Loans Sanders cosponsored a bill to restore the rate to 3.4 percent and stave off what he said “would be a disaster for millions of students and their families.” Already the average debt for a college grad is $27,200. A staggering $1.1 trillion in education loans outstanding is greater than Americans’ total credit card debt. This affects people’s careers and hurts our economy. In the long term, Sanders said, we must make college more affordable and accessible. In the short term, Congress must act soon to bring rates back down to 3.4 percent. Watch a Yahoo News interview. Take our poll

Immigration Bill, with Sanders Youth Jobs Provision, Passes Senate The Senate on Thursday passed an immigration reform bill that provides a path to citizenship for millions of migrants already living in the United States. Bernie was a strong supporter. Despite concerns about expanding guest-worker visa programs, Sanders threw his support behind passage after a $1.5 billion youth jobs initiative he proposed was added to the legislation. The two-year program will help find jobs for more than 400,000 16- to 24-year-olds. “At a time when real unemployment is close to 14 percent and even higher among young people and minorities, it is absolutely imperative that we create millions of decent-paying jobs in our country,” he said.

Supreme Court Justices ended their term with a flurry of rulings on landmark cases. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. “The law is as necessary today as it was in the era of Jim Crow laws,” Bernie said. “We must act immediately to rewrite this vital law.” Then on Wednesday the court held that a law denying federal benefits to same-sex married couples is unconstitutional. In 1996, Bernie was one of only 67 House members to vote against that discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act. In a companion case, justices threw out a legal challenge to gay marriage in California. The nation’s largest state will become the 13th, including Vermont, where gays may wed. Listen to Bernie on the voting rights case.  Read Bernie's statement on the gay marriage cases.

Global Warming President Obama said on Tuesday that he will take steps to limit heat-trapping pollution from coal-fired power plants and boost renewable energy production. Sanders agreed but the senator who sits on the environment and energy committees said that much more must be done. Obama must support a tax on carbon and methane emissions to show the world that the United States is prepared to transform our energy system and be an international leader on climate change. “And the president must not give speeches about the dangers of global warming and then turn around and allow construction of the Keystone pipeline,” Sanders added.

Minimum Wage In a stunningly blunt exchange at a Senate hearing, Sen. Lamar Alexander told Sanders that the minimum wage should be abolished. A witness from the Heritage Foundation agreed. While there have been political differences over what the wage should be, there has been a minimum wage set by law in the United States since the 1930s. Watch highlights from Wednesday’s  Senate hearing.

Domestic Spying A group of more than two dozen senators, including Sanders, on Friday asked Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to make public information about the duration and scope of secret government surveillance programs that collected massive amounts of data on the communications of ordinary Americans not suspected of any wrongdoing. Organized by Senate Intelligence Committee member Ron Wyden, the senators said recent public disclosures about the secret domestic surveillance activities raised serious civil liberty concerns.  Among the senators’ questions: How long has the NSA used Patriot Act authorities to engage in bulk collection of Americans’ records?  Has the NSA collected or made any plans to collect Americans’ cell-site location data in bulk?  Are there any specific examples of instances in which intelligence gained by reviewing phone records obtained through Section 215 bulk collection proved useful in thwarting a particular terrorist plot?   Read the letter. Sign the petition supporting Sanders’ Restore Our Privacy Act.