Anti-federalist in charge beginning to suppress the facts (10)
I believe the answer is:
statistics
'facts' is the definition.
The answer and definition can be both related to thinking as well as being plural nouns.
Maybe they are linked in a way I don't understand?
'anti-federalist in charge beginning to suppress' is the wordplay.
'anti federalist' becomes 'statist' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'in charge' becomes 'ic' (abbreviation for 'in charge').
'beginning to' says to take the initial letters.
The initial letter of 'suppress' is 's'.
'statist'+'ic'+'s'='STATISTICS'
'the' is the link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for statistics that I've seen before include "results" , "'20, 16 20, and _____'" , "Branch of maths" , "(Study of) quantitative data" .)