[Python] Why is session.get() returning unicode instead of json?

import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
import json

session = requests.Session()

url = "https://curiosa.io/decks/cmbcn15x3003cl704euvw894m"

response = session.get(url)

# load url from DevTools
url = 'https://curiosa.io/api/trpc/deck.getDecklistById,deck.getAvatarById,deck.getSideboardById,deck.getMaybeboardById?batch=1&input=%7B%220%22%3A%7B%22json%22%3A%7B%22id%22%3A%22cmbcn15x3003cl704euvw894m%22%7D%7D%2C%221%22%3A%7B%22json%22%3A%7B%22id%22%3A%22cmbcn15x3003cl704euvw894m%22%7D%7D%2C%222%22%3A%7B%22json%22%3A%7B%22id%22%3A%22cmbcn15x3003cl704euvw894m%22%7D%7D%2C%223%22%3A%7B%22json%22%3A%7B%22id%22%3A%22cmbcn15x3003cl704euvw894m%22%7D%7D%7D'

headers = {
"User-Agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:139.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/139.0",
"Accept": "*/*",
"Accept-Language": "en-US,en;q=0.5",
"Accept-Encoding": "gzip, deflate, br, zstd",
"Referer": "https://curiosa.io/decks/cmbcn15x3003cl704euvw894m",
"content-type": "application/json",
"x-build-id": "f7b49bf06ceefe470ea1bd27506c319176a942f8",
"x-trpc-source": "nextjs-react",
}

response = session.get(url, headers=headers)
print(response.text)
data = response.json()


response.text prints out a bunch of unicode, instead of json.

The json can be found through the original web page by going to DevTools (Firefox) and clicking on Network, then going by the image below.



I tried printing out response.text to see if it was decipherable as json and that's where it was revealed that unicode is being obtained, rather than json. I double checked my headers for the session. data = response.json() throws this error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "//./sorcery.py", line 27, in <module>
data = response.json()
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.13/site-packages/requests/models.py", line 980, in json
raise RequestsJSONDecodeError(e.msg, e.doc, e.pos)
requests.exceptions.JSONDecodeError: Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0)

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