Donald Trump's mercurial, chaotic ways are the overriding narrative of his early White House days. But most of the press misses his discipline in one crucial area: filling vacancies on federal courts. He may be lax in filling many administrative posts, but it's just not true with the courts.

The reality underscores a gaping hole in journalism, as a federal judge noted to me Thursday. How often do major media outlets pay serious attention to the appointment of district court and appeals judges, beyond the occasional overtly controversial selection?

He might have added this question: How many newspaper editors or reporters can even name, much less speak cogently about, district or appeals judges in their backyards? Or this: How many reporters who actually cover federal buildings write regularly about the overall performance of judges in the building beyond an individual newsy case or particular decision in which those judges are involved?

Two recent pieces — in Business Insider and The New Yorker — are among the few to underscore the Trump judicial machinery at play. It's needed, we were reminded Thursday, since public ignorance about the legal system is apparently assumed to be so deep that most media outlets yesterday offered Civics 101 definitions of a foundational institution, a "grand jury," amid word that Robert Mueller has impaneled one.

As Allan Smith of Business Insider makes clear, "When it comes to nominating judges to the federal bench, Trump is moving at a breakneck pace. And the number of nominees for vacant U.S. attorney positions, a crucial area, is dwarfing" that of Barack Obama, at least at this stage.

If these picks could be the ultimate Trump legacy, consider that "through July 14, roughly a week shy of Trump's six-month anniversary in office, he had nominated 18 people for district judgeship vacancies, 14 for circuit courts and the Court of Federal Claims, and 23 for US attorney slots. During that same timeframe in Obama's first term, Obama had nominated just four district judges, five appeals court judges, and 13 U.S. attorneys. In total, Trump nominated 55 people, and Obama just 22."

In The New Yorker, Jeffery Toobin cites the nomination of Kevin Newsom for the Atlanta-based Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals (covering cases in Georgia, Alabama and Florida) as prototypical: he's got "excellent formal qualifications, including a degree from Harvard Law School, a Supreme Court clerkship, and a stint as the solicitor general of Alabama, where he excelled at defending the state’s imposition of capital punishment against legal challenges."

And, importantly, he is young — just 45 — and a political conservative who's been a member of the right-leaning Federalist Society.

Toobin makes two other relevant points. First, the process shows how Republicans tend to care more than Democrats about putting their team on the federal bench. Second, the key senator in the whole process, Republican Chuck Grassley of Iowa, could tinker with the tradition under which any senator from a judgeship’s state can veto a judicial nomination.

If he alters or eliminates that tradition, the GOP is sitting pretty precisely due to a Senate rules change made by Democrats during the Obama years, which means Republicans can ram home most judicial nominations with a simple 51-vote majority.

In so many ways, Trump is short-sighted and haphazard. But not in all. It's a story most are totally missing.

The morning babble (Robert Mueller edition)

Trump & Friends actually opened with the president's combative speech in West Virginia last night, or at least a sugarcoated version. "If you missed it, we have boiled down the good parts of the rally speech to this minute-thirty montage," said co-host Steve Doocy. Yes, the "good parts," including Trump ridiculing Mueller and Hillary Clinton, though its subsequent analysis of viewer reactions conceded more intense pushback than previously to his "Washington as swamp" theme from Democrats and independents.