 WASHINGTON - On Monday, President Donald Trumps long-deferred pick to head the U.S. Agency for Global Media, finally started work after a bruising, two-year Senate confirmation battle. By the end of Wednesday, Michael Pack had achieved a clean sweep of the top offices of every division he oversees - including venerable news outlets like Voice of America and Radio Free Europe. The swift purge of former appointees has increased the worry among Democrats and press freedom advocates that the Trump administration is attempting to gain control over an independent but federally funded media organization with among the largest audiences in the world. On its own, the Voice of America delivers television and radio programs to 236.6 million people - and in some countries dominated by state media, it is the only free and unshackled news source. USAGMs role as an unbiased news organization is in jeopardy, said Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Wednesday in a statement. Pack, he added, needs to understand that USAGM is not the Ministry of Information. Yet the machinations of recent weeks also epitomize Trumps knack for turning a relatively obscure issue or backwater agency into fodder for a culture war - with little more than a tweet. The president first nominated Pack, who is in his mid-60s, for the USAGM job in 2018. Pack is revered in Republican circles as something of a unicorn - a documentary filmmaker with solid conservative credentials he served as president of the Claremont Institute, a prominent think tank who could also make PBS-quality work. His projects have included God and the Inner City, about three faith-based organizations; a film on the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress; and an appreciative documentary about the life of Clarence Thomas, featuring... 