For a certain brand of Democrats, all crime victims must look alike.
Democratic North Carolina Rep. Deborah Ross made a show Monday of grandstanding about her feelings for the victims of violent crime during a House Judiciary Committee hearing in Charlotte, but showed how shallow it really was when she mixed up the identity of a murdered woman whose picture was present in the room.
And the murder victim’s father erupted.
North Carolina Republican Rep. Mark Harris publicized the moment in a video posted to the social media platform X.
Steve Federico’s daughter was brutally murdered, but Rep. Ross just confused her with Iryna Zarutska.
There’s so many victims of pro-crime Democrat policies, they can’t keep track! pic.twitter.com/euDmK6Ormh
— Rep. Mark Harris (@RepMarkHarrisNC) September 29, 2025
Moments earlier, during her opening statement of the hearing, Ross had been discussing the brutal murder of Ukraine war refugee Iryna Zuretska — an act of savagery that shocked the nation.
In the process, she noted Zuretska’s family had said they wanted her to be remembered how she lived, rather than how she died — “as the vibrant and exceptionally kind person she was.”
“And I’m thrilled that we have a picture of her in that state right in front of us,” she said, gesturing in front of the speakers’ table.
Are Democratic policies to blame when career criminals remain free on the streets?
The problem was, as the conservative website Townhall noted, that it wasn’t a picture of Zuretska. It was a picture of Logan Federico, a 22-year-old woman murdered in May by a career criminal who should never have been free to take a life.
“That’s my daughter,” Logan’s father, Steve Federico, interrupted from his front-row seat.
As Ross spluttered apologies, the man continued:
“Logan Federico. Before Iryna. Four months before. How dare you not know her?”
That’s a good question. And the obvious answer isn’t just bad prep work by Ross’s congressional staff.
In fact, Harris answered it in his X post: “There’s so many victims of pro-crime Democrat policies, they can’t keep track!”
Some of the names of murdered women have been a fixture in national headlines: Zarutska, Laken Riley, Jocelyn Nungaray.
Some, like Federico, have surfaced and then been consigned to their local areas for news coverage. But they all have in common the fact that they were murdered by criminals who should not have been in any position to take their victims’ lives.
In Federico’s case, that killer was identified by authorities as Alexander Dickey, a man with 40 prior arrests stretching back to 2014. He’d completed his most recent probationary term in February, according to WIS-TV in Columbia, South Carolina.
🚨#BREAKING: Father of 22-year-old Logan Federico is screaming at Democrats in Congress after his daughter was dragged from bed, forced on her knees, and executed…
…by a man arrested 39 TIMES with 25 FELONIES!!!
Everyone who let this demon walk freely, should be in prison. pic.twitter.com/cgwRNUCrR7
— Matt Van Swol (@matt_vanswol) September 29, 2025
Ross used her opening statement to rail about Republicans.
“They want you to believe that ‘tough on crime’ and saying ‘law and order’ is going to solve the problem,” she said.
“And they want to believe that a slogan will make America safe again.”
She then, ludicrously, complained that it’s Republicans in Washington who want to “defund police.”
The problem with that is that Americans who’ve paid even scant attention to the news of the past decade, and particularly the past five years, know full well which party is soft on crime and which party really wants to defund the police.
Americans with eyes, ears, and a functional frontal brain lobe have no question about which political party considers it more important for criminal illegal aliens and criminals of the home-grown variety to be walking free than it is for young women like Logan Federico, Laken Riley, Iryna Zarutska or Jocelyn Nungaray — and the countless other men, women, and children like them across the country — to be living and leading their lives today.
Sure, the mistaken identity that plagued Ross might well have been a simple mistake — a misunderstood note from a staffer, for instance.
But the fact of the matter is, the Democratic Party has spent the past decade standing for lawlessness. During the Biden administration, it put that standing into practice across the country.
And as the stomach-turning reactions from leftists to murders like the assassination of Charlie Kirk or the shot-in-the-back slaying of health care executive Brian Johnson in December, it’s not just the Democratic brand anymore. It’s the progressive-liberal mindset.
The result has been so many victims that they run together, even in Democratic minds. And they all, apparently, look alike.
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