No fee according to TFA

Where does it say that? ESTA doesn't appear and searching waiv only turns up:

> The fee applies to all visitors who need nonimmigrant visas to enter, and cannot be waived.

Which sounds like the opposite of "no fee"?

The visa waiver program does not require those eligible to get non-immigrant visas (hence the phrase “visa waiver”), so if the scope of the new program is, in fact, “all visitors who need non-immigrant visas”, those eligible for visa waivers would be outside its coverage.

ESTA is not a visa. It's specifically the process to enter America for people who do not need a visa.

It's called a visa waiver, but it's effectively a lightweight visa process. Look at what it involves, not what it is called.

It is a lightweight pseudo-visa process, but it does not involve anything which is actually legally a visa, so a program that is attached to non-immigrant visas does not apply to it. What things are called in law matters quite a lot.

For sure, I'm not disputing this.

ESTA is just the authorization to apply, nothing to actually get you into the country.

With an ESTA in hand, an eligible visitor must get an I-94 visa waiver at the border for $6. Even with a valid ESTA this can be denied.

Source: at this point I’ve had 4 dozen of them over the last two decades.

You can be denied at the US border if you have a full and valid visa. The only way not to be denied is to be a US citizen (so far ...)

That’s true with any country.