That's not what I understood from the memo. My understanding is that any cut will be for future draws and ITAs, because they need to accommodate new pathways that they deem is necessary.
The stop in draws is to help them clear the backlog and land those for this year's target. Likelihood is that majority of post-AORs will land this year, if not all.
Well, look at this in this manner. Their SLA for EE FSW+CEC processing is 6 months, right? So any draws after June can be earmarked to next years quota. This means, only invites for this year in first half will eat up the quota for this year. This is why they are saying no draws till June/July.
Now you have a quota of 50K in the worst scenario for FSW+CEC (60K goes for FISTULA (erstwhile TR2PR) and HEC (erstwhile Afghan immigration)). You have about 80K in backlog (54K for FSW, 24K for CEC and 1 K or so for FST). It does not take a genius to figure it out that they may not have enough space to land everyone in FHS in the WORST CASE when ALL the haircuts happens from FHS quota.
I think the other options they are talking about are taking some from spouse qouta or refugee quota to give FHS more breather. Another possibility (which is most likely) is to add more landing quota this year. The only unknow is the liberal mind of these folks. When they will add more quota, is it possible for them to get excited and align it with a new pilot of some sorts and neglect FHS?