I began a letter to our congressional delegation with a question: “Can you look into why my tax and social security information is being investigated?” When people voted for Donald Trump, I continued, they didn’t vote for Elon Musk to paw through their personal information as he did of employees after buying Twitter.

But in looking over this message before sending, I realized that this is just what Musk is doing again. He gave the Trump election campaign about $288 million, a lot of money, but a small price for access to the government with which he has contracts for billions of dollars. For his investment, he’s been given a free hand to fire tens of thousands of people, including government employees who have oversight of his contracts, and to view the personal information of any man, woman and child in the country.

I added this perception to my message and asked if something could be done to restrain Musk’s free hand from prying into our lives — and from ruining the lives of tens of thousands of people by firing them with no notice. People our taxes pay to service our needs, maintain our safety. People who are also our neighbors.

After all, we’re not like members of Twitter who can be X’d. Are we?

Art Petersen

Juneau