confluent-kafka 2.6.2 started using httpx instead of requests for the SchemaRegistryClient (https://docs.confluent.io/platform/current/clients/confluent-kafka-python/html/index.html?#schemaregistryclient), causing the REQUESTS_CA_BUNDLE environment variable to have no effect, ultimately causing SSL certificate validation errors (see https://wikimedia.slack.com/archives/C02291Z9YQY/p1738097562314939).
We create this task to make sure we don't pin confluent-kafka to 2.6.0 indefinitely.