Doing away with them was dumb. They actually provide incentives for members of Congress to do The Bipartisan Deals that are supposed to be wonderful (and often are necessary, even if largely because our system is dumb). They give members of Congress a small opportunity to actually represent their constituents. As names are effectively attached to things, they actually provide more democratic accountability than for something "allocated according to some formula deep in the DOT" or similar.
Also, contrary to what the fucking newspaper is desperate to make you think, it's a tiny amount of money going to often important things that would otherwise not be addressed.
Democrats and Republicans alike stuffed nearly 5,000 earmarks totaling $9 billion into the $1.5 trillion government spending bill signed by President Biden.
If you have any concept of numbers, unlike the innuerate dipshits of our political press, you can see how trivial that "stuffed" $9 billion is.
