Has any U.S. senator publicly waived their salary during a federal government shutdown in 2013 or 2018-2019?

1. What the original claim asserts and why it matters: parsing the question that started this check

The original question asks whether any U.S. senator publicly waived their salary during the federal government shutdowns of 2013 or 2018–2019. This is a fact-check about public actions — pledges, instructions to disbursing offices, or donations — not about changes to law or automatic pay suspensions. The distinction matters because members of Congress are paid by statute and can voluntarily refuse or donate pay; these gestures are political statements rather than legal deductions. Some sources treat such gestures as noteworthy solidarity with furloughed workers; others treat them as symbolic and therefore omit or downplay them. The source set provided includes contemporaneous reporting of acts of waiver/donation and other summaries that do not enumerate senators, so the claim can be evaluated by comparing those records ^{[1] [4]}.

2. Evidence from the 2013 shutdown: names and scope where reporting exists

Contemporary coverage from October 2013 recorded more than 75 lawmakers pledging to give up pay during that shutdown, and explicitly named several senators — including Sherrod Brown, Chris Coons, Mike Crapo and Ted Cruz — as having waived or pledged their salary or donated it to charity ^[1]. Those reports accompanied legislative efforts such as the Government Shutdown Fairness Act and No Government, No Pay Act that sought to address pay during shutdowns, reinforcing why the voluntary pledges received attention. Other summaries of the 2013 episode in the dataset, however, do not list names and focus on the passage of back-pay measures rather than individual gestures, which explains why some analyses conclude “no senator waived pay” simply because they do not include the pledge reporting ^{[5] [6]}.

3. Evidence from the 2018–2019 shutdown: documented refusals and public donations

Reporting centered on the 2018–2019 shutdown is explicit: multiple outlets documented roughly 102 members of Congress (20 senators and 82 representatives) refusing paychecks, naming senators who donated their pay — for example, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, Chris Van Hollen, Richard Blumenthal and Mazie Hirono among others — and noting some senators instructed disbursing offices to treat them like unpaid federal employees ^{[4] [2] [3]}. These sources emphasize that the majority of lawmakers continued to receive pay by default but that a visible minority publicly rejected pay as an act of solidarity. The reporting dates to January 2019 and summarizes contemporaneous public statements and disbursing instructions.

4. Why different sources disagree or omit senator names: coverage choices and political framing

The dataset shows two patterns: one set of pieces catalogs individual pledges and donations during shutdowns, and another set focuses on legislative outcomes (back-pay votes) or broader political implications and therefore does not list individual lawmakers. Omission is often a reporting choice, not evidence that no senator acted, and partisan framing sometimes elevates or downplays such gestures — outlets emphasizing solidarity highlight the names and donations, while procedural or analytical pieces concentrate on bills and votes ^{[5] [6] [2]}. That means verifying the claim requires consulting the contemporaneous list-style reporting as well as legislative summaries to get both the symbolic and the statutory pictures.

5. Bottom line: what can be concluded from the available sources and what’s left uncertain

From the provided material, the clear conclusion is that senators did publicly waive, reject, or donate their pay both in 2013 and in the 2018–2019 shutdown, with named participants in 2013 (e.g., Brown, Coons, Crapo, Cruz) and a documented cohort in 2019 including at least Warren, Klobuchar, Sanders, Van Hollen, Blumenthal and Hirono ^{[1] [2] [3]}. Discrepancies among summaries stem from differing journalistic focus and the symbolic versus legal nature of the acts. If you want a definitive, name-by-name roster for either shutdown, consult contemporaneous list-style reports and the Senate disbursing office records for precise directives and donation confirmations; the sources here establish the factual claim that senators did, in fact, publicly forgo or redirect pay during both shutdowns ^{[1] [4] [3]}.