Unkless you can specifically tell us what you are being asked to grant and why. I and no one else can tell you what might be the cause and what might be a solution.

What I can tell you is Thunderbird add-ons require various permissions to function correctly and you are asked to grant them. So I am guessing you do not have a bug, but you do have features (like email account address books and calendars) and/or addons that are just not working because you have not granted them permission to actually work..

It was as you surmised, TBird wanted access to all email sources. I gave the permissions and all the nags stopped. I do NOT like this new version and I have used TBird for as long as I can recall. I compare this to MS unleashing a new version on us and letting us solve the problems. Decades ago, I did Beta Testing for a couple of companies but I knew that was what I volunteered to do. This is not one of those companies but it does resemble MS in far too many ways with this release. A couple of techies have suggested the new Outlook but I don't think that would be progress, more of a lateral move at this point in time. (Tongue in cheek). Thanks for your help. I just get a bit testy when I lose most of my contacts, and, Yes, I do know how to move TBird from one pc to another.

People claim they want control. When they get it (these requests are allowing users to control their data and what parts of it are allowed to go to various addons). This has essentially been around for a number of years now, basically since Thunderbird 68. As updates are now monthly I am thinking that addons are popping this type of dialog more frequently as they often need to be updated for each release. I have not had issues with this, but I have seen comments in a couple of addon git hub repositories about the monthly release and requests for support.

BTW I also looked at the new outlook. man oh man it was so dumbed down as to make the outlook website version look positively robust. Dropped features and functions abound. Not for me unless I am paid to use it.