…the right to decide what is true
is not independent of the right to decide what is just,
even if statement consigned to these two authorities differ in nature.
The point is there is a strict interlinkage
between the kind of language called science and the kind called ethics and politics:
they both stem from the same perspective, the same “choice” if you will –

… knowledge and power are two sides of the same question:
who decides what knowledge is,
and who knows what needs to be decided?
In the computer age,
the question of knowledge is now more than ever
a question of government.

— excerpt, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge by Jean-Francois Lyotard, translation by Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi

A supreme obvious issue of our time is who gets to decide what is true.  There is a great struggle, on the scale of Godzilla vs Kong, on the problem of the legitimation of truth between the scientific community, and the party in power along with their adherents.  The old Republican Party having been overrun by Libertarian minded, hyper-aggressive neocons, now become the Trump Party, repudiates Climate warming, while standing behind a President who insists upon his right to decide what is scientifically and empirically true.  The CDC advisement to wear face masks, to avoid large gatherings does not matter to the President.  The televised image of the President ripping off his face mask as he stands on the White House balcony is unforgettable.  He continues to schedule mass rallies, campaign events which are certain to be super-spreader occasions for the virus.  The deadly corona virus is minimized, de-legitimated in the universe of discourse in which the president and his supporters live.

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Pilate saith unto him, What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again unto the Jews, and saith unto them, I find in him no fault at all.

*Gospel of John chapter 18 verse 38

Legitimization of truth is a question that persists from late antiquity.

The hearing conducted by the Roman governor features the enigmatic question.  Pilate is not interested in an answer because he knows already what he is going to do.  The legitimated answer is implied by his right to pose the ironic question.  Pontius Pilate’s job is to maintain “law and order,” a euphemism for social order guaranteed by Rome’s military prowess.  He is the man who decides what needs to  be decided.

What was one less Jew to the Roman governor?

What are additional thousands of coronavirus deaths to the man in the White House?

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Jean-François Lyotard  (August 10, 1924 – April 21, 1998) was a French philosopher, sociologist, and literary theorist. His interdisciplinary discourse spans such topics as epistemology and communication, the human body, modern art and postmodern art, literature and critical theory, music, film, time and memory, space, the city and landscape, the sublime, and the relation between aesthetics and politics. He is best known for his articulation of postmodernism after the late 1970s and the analysis of the impact of postmodernity on the human condition. Lyotard was a key personality in contemporary Continental philosophy and author of 26 books and many articles.  — Wikipedia