Which cabinet secretaries or institutional actors historically signaled willingness or refusal to participate in a Section 4 action on January 6, 2021?

1. What contemporaneous actors publicly demanded action and why

In the immediate days after the Capitol breach, members of the House formally called on Vice President Mike Pence to convene the principal officers of the executive departments to activate Section 4 — a public, congressional effort that placed pressure on the Cabinet to respond to perceived presidential incapacity ^{[2] [3]}. That formal congressional call echoed widespread denunciations of the violence from several Cabinet officials, who issued public statements condemning the attack and, in a handful of cases, resigned—actions that signaled dissent but did not amount to documented pledges to vote for Section 4 ^[5].

2. Private deliberations, acting officials, and the opacity problem

Scholarly reporting and legal commentary confirm that “multiple Cabinet Secretaries” discussed invoking the 25th Amendment after January 6, but the identities of officials willing to sign a Section 4 declaration are not exhaustively cataloged in the sources provided; the legal literature emphasizes the debate rather than a roll call of commitments ^[1]. Lawfare and academic analysis also underscore a critical complicating fact from that moment: five of the president’s 15 Cabinet posts were filled by acting secretaries, raising legal ambiguity over whether those acting officials should be counted for a Section 4 majority—an ambiguity that commentators recommended Congress remedy by statute ^[4].

3. Who signaled refusal (and how clear is the record)?

The available contemporary reporting does not present a definitive list of Cabinet secretaries who publicly refused to participate in a Section 4 action; instead, public statements from many secretaries focused on condemning the violence and supporting a peaceful transition, not on committing for or against invoking the 25th Amendment ^[5]. Some resignations in the wake of January 6 are documented, which reduced the pool of Senate-confirmed Cabinet officers and complicated any potential Section 4 vote, but resignation itself is not equivalent to a public refusal to sign the amendment paperwork ^{[5] [1]}.

4. Legal and political stakes that shaped actors’ choices

Legal scholars warned that excluding acting secretaries from eligibility would create a perverse incentive for a president to remove Cabinet members who might side against him, and that the ambiguity could deter officials from pursuing Section 4 even if they believed it warranted—an institutional concern likely shaping private deliberations among senior officials ^[4]. Political pressures also loomed: congressional calls to act carried partisan overtones and potential career consequences for officials weighing whether to join an extraordinary transfer of power, factors that the sources note as influencing the atmosphere though not itemizing who decided which way ^{[2] [4]}.

5. What the record supports — and what it does not

The record reliably shows public congressional appeals to convene the Cabinet and contemporary reporting of Cabinet members condemning the January 6 violence and a small number of resignations; legal scholarship and analysis document private discussion among “multiple” secretaries and highlight the acting-secretary ambiguity ^{[2] [3] [5] [1] [4]}. The sources do not, however, provide an authoritative list of which named Cabinet secretaries formally signaled willingness to sign a Section 4 declaration or which explicitly refused, and therefore any claim to a complete roll call would exceed what these documents substantiate ^{[1] [4] [5]}.